


wander the wild whereby

by mediest



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Blow Jobs, M/M, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:34:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 55,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23630071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediest/pseuds/mediest
Summary: In ship years, theScyllais a woman well into her 40s. She’s mature, she’s dependable, and she’s seen some shit. Sylvain found her in a used shipyard over five years ago: battered by asteroids, her main engine a constellation of outdated parts, rats and birds nesting in her cargo bay. Maybe it was messed up for Sylvain to look at a spacecraft and see a metaphor, but there you go.-Sylvain hops around the galaxy looking for freedom and running from trouble. Jury’s still out on which one Felix represents.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 286
Kudos: 675





	1. strays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew picks up a passenger.

Garreg Mach is the only neutral territory left in the galaxy, but war is like a wave—when it breaks, it breaks against the entire shore. The spaceport is flooded with activity: food and textiles and weapons vendors; hawkers yelling out their prices; people displaced from their homes and looking for work; hitchhikers. A Seiros cruiser docked to refuel this afternoon, and there are Knights everywhere. A man stands in a crowd, preaching about the Goddess. 

Sylvain stops at a jewelry stall. The owner is a short, surly woman with a suspicious expression. He doesn’t blame her. There’s gunpowder in the air. Everyone can taste it. In the display mirror he watches the Agarthans passing through too, the black hoods of their cloaks casting shadows over their faces. 

One of them slows his pace. He meets Sylvain’s gaze in the mirror. Smiles at him.

It’s like staring into the eyes of a snake. 

Sylvain needs to get out of the street. He pays for a pair of earrings, then stops fucking around. 

At the next alley, he takes an abrupt turn, then two more. Past the assembly of proselytizing Seiros worshippers. Right through the Mittelfrank’s unmarked door.

One of his top ten talents: ditching a shadow. All the freelancers that Daddy Gautier had sent to retrieve him, and Sylvain’d rabbited away from each and every one.

The Mittelfrank is an establishment of middling respectability, named for a renowned opera troupe on Enbarr. In the front, a smoky lounge drenched in red accent lighting. In the back, a fun little gambling ring. Sylvain orders a drink, orders a second one. He keeps an eye on the velvet curtains draped over the entrance and listens to a beautiful woman singing old Adrestian jazz standards.

Dorothea joins him at the bar during her five-minute break. Her dress is backless and she smells divine. 

“Back in town for a job?” she asks sweetly, taking a seat.

“Just making some ship repairs.” He stops watching the door and smiles. “How late are you working today? Got any dinner plans?”

Dorothea breezes past the invitation: “Aw, what happened to the _Scylla_?”

“Nothing major,” Sylvain says. “We ran into a little too much excitement.”

“There’s a lot of that going around these days,” she says. 

Last week Fhirdiad officials posted a hot new bounty. The bulletin describes the crime as “theft of government property”. It’s a huge pot of money. Whatever was stolen, Cornelia must be pissed. And since Cornelia is a Thales-sympathizer, Rhea’s acolytes want a piece of the action too. It’s a race now: who’s gonna flush out the fugitive first? All week they’ve been flying into Garreg Mach atmo, the Agarthans hunting for their lost asset, the Knights looking to prove themselves to their Church, the freelancers lusting after retirement money. The whole planet has become a powder keg. 

“I suppose it’s like this everywhere else too,” Dorothea says, sipping on her honey lemon tea. “Adrestia seems intent on cannibalizing itself.”

“Faerghus isn’t doing any better,” Sylvain says. His home sector has been eating its own tail for years. The Agarthans and the Church of Seiros have happily funded opposite sides of that mess of a civil war. 

Dorothea grew up on Enbarr, Adrestia’s capital planet. Sylvain learned that about her, lying in her bed. They were playing two truths and a lie, as they often did, and that was one of her truths. The other truth: “The weather was warm.” The lie: “The people were too.”

“I hear Brigid’s nice,” Dorothea muses. In her voice is something performatively wistful laid over an actual wistfulness.

“I could give you a ride,” Sylvain says. “We’re flying out tomorrow morning. There’s a spare bunk.”

Dorothea looks amused. “I can’t begin to tell you how much I’m not one of your strays, Sylvain.”

Ouch, but he grins along with her. “Worth a shot.” He finishes his drink and adds, “You’ll be okay out here on your own?”

“Of course I will.” 

Up on stage, the band is getting ready again. Dorothea stands and pats Sylvain’s knee. “My shift’s up in an hour. That’s an hour for you to think about where you can treat me to dinner.”

-

In ship years, the _Scylla_ is a woman well into her 40s. She’s mature, she’s dependable, and she’s seen some shit. She was originally commissioned as a small peacetime transport, then got drafted into doing supply runs to and from the Locket during the Almyran invasion. Combat was way outside her vessel class capabilities. Sylvain found her in a used shipyard over five years ago: battered by asteroids, her main engine a constellation of outdated parts, rats and birds nesting in her cargo bay. Maybe it was messed up for Sylvain to look at a spacecraft and see a metaphor, but there you go. He bought her cheap and handled the repairs himself. Made a wreck of it, too, up until he ran into Annette. New paint job, new name. She lacks any real firepower. None of the gloss and shine of the younger transport models. But she’s fast and durable as hell and she has never, ever left Sylvain floating stranded out in the big vast darkness.

He makes it back after his sleepover with Dorothea only a little hungover. The docking bay is quiet in the early morning, not too many bodies hanging around, just the good shit: metal whirring and sparking everywhere, the pure and comforting stink of engine oil. Annette is loading crates of ammo and—root vegetables?—into the _Scylla_ ’s cargo bay. 

“Whoa, let me get that,” Sylvain says, swooping in to take another leafy crate off Annette’s hands. “Did you get everything you need?”

Annette wipes her palms against her coveralls and beams up at him. “Yup! Got the new relief valve installed. Dedue used the rest of the money to buy us some fresh veg.”

That explains the garden in Sylvain’s arms. “I thought we were saving up for a decent nav-com upgrade.”

Ashe appears from out of nowhere to intercept the crate. For a moment they all play hot potato with the turnips. “We voted and pushed Not Getting Scurvy up the agenda instead,” he says. 

“Without me? I’m the captain,” Sylvain whines.

“Yes, captain,” Annette says.

“There’s a man who’s been glowering at us all morning,” Ashe says, tilting his chin towards the service elevator, where—yeah, that guy looks angry alright. “Seems like something that could use a captain’s touch.”

“Scream if you need back-up, captain,” Annette quips, and then she and Ashe go skipping hand-in-hand (symbolically) up the entry ramp.

The glowering man is good-looking, in a dirty, intense way. A long soak in the bath wouldn’t hurt. Lithe and muscular and all the other words you’d use to describe a jungle cat. His hair is dark, chopped messily short. Definitely not a dock worker. The long coat does a good job hiding the gun holstered to his left thigh, but not the knife in his right boot. And Sylvain knows there are other weapons he’s not seeing. Those eyes alone are fatal. 

At his feet lies some cargo of his own: a huge freezer the size of two dog kennels, enforced with thick steel. It looks heavy. 

Sylvain spins through his catalogue and picks out the disarming, we’re-all-friends-here smile. “My crew was wondering when you’d come over and introduce yourself.”

“You came over to me,” Dirty-Hot says. 

“And you see how easy that was?” Sylvain says. “More polite than glaring, in any case. Can I help you with something?”

Dirty-Hot glares some more. On second thought, it’s not anger: his body language is protective, wary. 

Sylvain is, regretfully, intrigued.

“I heard you take passengers,” Dirty-Hot says. 

Not exactly the response Sylvain was anticipating.

“You heard that, huh,” he says. Someone in this spaceport has a big fucking mouth. Dorothea teases about strays, but the reality is that Sylvain is highly deliberate about who he lets onto his ship. Sure, the _Scylla_ has taxi’d civilians around the galaxy before; it’s easy money when the transport jobs dry up. This guy does not come off like a civilian.

“The passenger terminal is the next level up,” Sylvain says. “I bet there’s a lot of ferries that could take you where you need to go.”

He’s playing dumb a little bit. Dirty-Hot narrows his eyes.

“I’m claustrophobic,” he says tonelessly. 

“Then I hate to tell you this, but my ship’s even smaller.”

“I don’t like crowds.”

“You’re not a people person?” Sylvain asks innocently, and Dirty-Hot’s jaw clenches.

The longer this dance continues, the more the docking bay starts to fill up: spaceport staff, other transport crews. Their presence scrapes visibly against Dirty-Hot’s nerves. His gaze darts towards the beeping alarm of a loading truck. 

The collar of his coat falls open. The silver glint of a familiar style of dog tag flashes against his throat, then disappears again.

Well shit. Sylvain’s heart rate doubles. Years later and it’s still fucking Pavlovian.

Dirty-Hot notices Sylvain noticing. His voice drops, low and aggressive. “If you’re going to jerk me around, I’ll go find someone else—”

“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” Sylvain says quickly. “Just relax.”

He’s trying to think this through. The guy is well-armed, has sharp instincts, carries himself in this tight, controlled way. The label fits: Faerghus soldier. But he’s also alone on Garreg Mach, no division, keeping a low profile and obviously wants to fly unnoticed. Add up the columns and it begins to sound like _deserter_.

Later on down the line, when this whole situation goes to hell, Sylvain will say it was the eyes. He’ll blame the amber, the bright ring of vulnerability, the hint of somebody searching for a way out. Sylvain knows that feeling too well himself not to throw out a rope. 

“Our next stop is Galatea,” he hears himself saying.

Dirty-Hot needs to work on disguising his micro-expressions. Looks like Galatea is in the opposite direction from where he wants. “What about after that?” 

“Wherever the jobs take us.”

“Derdriu?” Dirty-Hot asks.

Sylvain shrugs. “Occasionally.”

“I’ll get off there.”

“It’s fifty a night,” Sylvain says. “Could be a few nights before we hit Derdriu.”

“I can pay,” Dirty-Hot says, and he must know by now that this is a done deal, because a flicker of relief cuts through some of the coldness in his face. 

And, Goddess in heaven, that face is unreal. Sylvain can’t keep calling him “Dirty-Hot”.

“What’s your name?” he asks. “I’m Sylvain.”

Dirty-Hot responds: “Thomas.”

Sylvain grins despite himself. This guy’s name is not fucking Thomas. “Welcome aboard the _Scylla_ , Tommy,” he says. “Let me give you a hand with your luggage.”

-

The _Scylla_ is manned by a five-person crew. Sylvain hired Annette a mere ten days after he procured himself a new flying home. She was hanging out around that very same shipyard, hunting for a job. The problem was she didn’t look like a mechanic and she didn’t have any formal training or references. Luckily Sylvain was a believer in redhead solidarity. Annette was a natural: fixed up the leak in the preburner that’d been plaguing Sylvain the whole week. Machines were the Dominic family trade. When the _Scylla_ was ready to go, Annette told Sylvain with her big blue eyes and a grease stain on her forehead, “If you let me tag along, I’ll keep her in the air for you.” The galaxy was only so big. Statistically, if they chased enough jobs across enough planets, she’d have to run into her dad again one of these days.

Next was Ashe, who’s had his eyes on the stars since he was a kid. The road getting himself there had been rocky and uphill. Orphaned, then adopted, then only one year of flight school before he dropped out because he was re-orphaned again and, the way Ashe tells it, the anger and the injustice of it all ate him up for a while. A man can’t fly without a sense of trust. When they first met, Ashe had only just started to pilot again, postal service rounds across the Faerghus sector. They struck up friendly conversation in the marketplace and, right in the middle of geeking out with Annette over the _Scylla_ ’s specs, Ashe a) caught the wrist of a kid whose sticky fingers were halfway inside Ashe’s coat pocket, b) ruffled the kid’s hair roughly in warning, and then c) pulled his wallet out on his own and slipped the kid a fiver.

Dedue came along a year later. This was in the early days of Sylvain’s smuggling operation, before he learned to really thoroughly understand what each job was about. Case in point: this job was allegedly about intercepting a shipment of goods before it reached Kleiman. “Oh, fuck this,” Ashe blurted out, after they sabotaged Dedue’s freighter only to find that the goods Dedue was carrying were cases of penicillin intended for a Duscur refugee settlement. “Shit,” Sylvain said too, “our bad. Sorry, man.” So they improvised a brand new job. This new one was about escorting Dedue and his penicillin the rest of the way to Kleiman in the _Scylla_ and trying not to get shot out of the sky. “Do you do this often?” Dedue asked, stoically holding on for dear life in the cockpit as Ashe outmaneuvered their ex-employer’s enforcer through a shower of cosmic debris, and Sylvain hedged, “Often enough?”

Mercedes is the newest addition. Sylvain caught a bullet in the stomach while delivering some cargo to Remire, that floating desolate hunk of space rock, and when he woke up in a medic tent doped up on drugs, he saw the most radiant woman hovering above him. The first thing he did was declare his love. She laughed, squeezing his hand, and responded, “I love you too. You’re going to be just fine.” Their first meeting was a haze, but Sylvain never forgot that part of it. It took him four days to get on his feet again. Those were four days spent immobile, unable to sleep or eat without help. No other way to pass the time but to let Mercedes get to know him. On day five, Sylvain was no longer high on painkillers, but he still couldn’t stop himself from offering, you know, the _Scylla_ could use a medic onboard. Annette nearly burst into happy tears, watching Mercedes arrange her modest belongings inside her new crew quarters. At last, another female presence!

Then there’s Sylvain himself. The less said there, the better.

Thomas says, “Nice to meet you,” with a perfunctory kind of politeness that ends up sounding pretty rude.

The Faerghus sector experiences the lowest temperatures out of the entire galaxy. The people who live there can develop a matching exterior, tough and unbending, keeping their warmth trapped on the inside. 

Ashe watches Thomas with a wide, inquisitive expression. Dedue’s expression is more guarded. Mercedes is watching Sylvain instead, one part curious “why did you do this?” and two parts entertained “of course you did this”.

Annette is the one to break the silence and ask, “Can I give you the grand tour?”

“Sure,” Thomas says haltingly. “Thanks.”

He has a single dufflebag of personal effects and of course the giant freezer that he’s been shielding territorially, putting his whole body between it and the _Scylla_ ’s crew. Annette just smiles and makes a “come with me!” motion. Hurricane Annie, a tropical storm of inescapable cheerfulness.

The moment they’re both out of earshot, Dedue says, “I wasn’t aware we were taking passengers again.”

Sylvain sits balanced on top of a crate of oranges and rubs his face, then peeks through his fingers up at Dedue. “It was sort of a last minute decision.”

“He seems friendly,” Ashe says, which is a straight-up lie, though Sylvain appreciates the effort. 

“Friendly or not, we’re gonna make him feel welcomed, do our jobs, get paid, and then drop him off the next time we make port on Derdriu.” Sylvain grabs an orange while he’s there, tosses it back and forth between his hands. “Clear skies, no more surprises.”

“It’ll be nice to get to know someone new,” Mercedes says.

“See? Mercedes gets it.” Sylvain grins, stretching. “Alright, let’s get our girl in the air.”

Ashe heads off to the cockpit. Mercedes starts on breakfast preparation. Dedue doesn’t go anywhere.

“You think this is a bad idea,” Sylvain says to him.

“I think it’s inadvisable,” Dedue agrees. He plucks the orange from Sylvain’s hands and takes out his pocketknife. “Our business on Galatea is within the law, but having a civilian passenger onboard past that point could raise complications for us.”

“Yeah, I hear you.” Sylvain watches as Dedue slices off the top and bottom of the orange, then cuts the whole thing neatly down the vertical center. “I wouldn’t say he’s a civilian, though. You see that knife?”

“I was distracted by the pistols.”

Pistols with an “s”—Dedue sighted one that Sylvain didn’t.

“I figure he’s like us,” Sylvain says. “Another guy who’s in a spot of trouble. We can afford to give him a lift.”

Dedue passes Sylvain half the orange, a citrusy sweet offering. “I trust your judgment,” he says, and adds, mouth curling, “captain.”

-

Thomas shows up to the common area, showered and changed, when the rest of them are halfway done eating. Mercedes has set a place for him at one end of the table. With her help, Dedue has prepared eggs, and bacon, and a vegetable hash that tastes incredible. The first few meals after Dedue buys fresh meat and produce planetside are always bliss; then it’s back to rationing out the dried stuff, the frozen stuff, and foil packages of protein. 

Thomas sits down, mutters an apology for being late. Not so Dirty-Hot anymore. Just regular hot, softened by cleanliness, with his hair damp and curling around his ears. 

Sylvain realizes that Thomas is probably a few years younger than himself. 

“Is the room comfortable?” he asks. “Water pressure okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Thomas says. He’s eyeing the bacon. Mercedes sees this and passes him the serving plate and a smile. 

Both Ashe and Annette are transparently fascinated by their new passenger. They sneak glances at him between mouthfuls, but Sylvain already banned overly personal questions, so they go on chattering about their pipedream ship modifications instead.

The whole meal Thomas only speaks up twice, once to ask Annette for the eggs, poached in a tomato and pepper sauce. The second time is when Annette warns him, “It’s a bit spicy,” as she ladles a heaping spoonful into Thomas’s bowl. 

The bowl gets passed from Annette, to Sylvain, back to Thomas, who says, “I can handle spice.”

Thomas digs into his food. That knife still in his boot. His skin washed glowing and pale. The posture of a cornered animal slowly sloughing off of him. And Sylvain thinks, _There’s truth number one._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fic title from  [lilacs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5szE2Wd8s94)  
> 


	2. a myth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sylvain makes a delivery to an old friend.

By all accounts, Galatea shouldn’t be able to support human life. The combination of its thin atmosphere and low mass makes it easy for any hint of water to evaporate out into space. Some of its deserts haven’t seen rainfall for years. It’s the warmest planet in the Faerghus sector, and the driest. Supplies have to be imported. Farming is near impossible: the soil is too silty, its salinity too high. Hardly anything grows. 

The people here eke out their living by the skin of their teeth. They take comfort in the holy trinity: their Goddess, their duty, and their king.

The king’s long dead and the Church is a shitshow, so duty it is, then. 

While Ashe takes them down bumping and grinding into Galatean atmosphere, Sylvain drops by Mercedes’ quarters. She’s tucked away cozily on the starboard side, neighbors with Annette. 

Everyone has that one thing they can’t leave behind on earth. Annette owns an old cassette player that she uses to fill the engine room with tape hiss and low-quality analog music that she insists is “layered” and “real”. Dedue faithfully tends to a snake plant growing beside his bunk. Ashe hoards books, so many fucking books that Sylvain swears it’s throwing off the _Scylla_ ’s weight distribution. 

And Mercedes sews. Almost every piece of clothing onboard this ship has passed through her hands at least once. Sometimes shirts get returned to Sylvain with a tiny red heart or blue flower stitched over where the hole was before. 

He raps his knuckles against the wall to get Mercedes’ attention. 

“Ashe and I’ll be back in an hour tops,” he tells her. “Dedue’s in charge while we’re gone.”

Usually he prefers to bring Dedue as back-up, but it’s tricky enough being in Faerghus again without the visual of one man with Gautier hair hanging out with another man of Duscur complexion, both of them over six feet tall and hauling five tons of cargo.

“Good luck,” Mercedes says, glancing up from the busted seam in one of Ashe’s jackets. She sees Sylvain’s face and adds, “I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you.”

Sylvain doesn’t deny it, but does ask, “Have a drink with me when it’s all over?”

“Will that help you feel better?”

“We won’t know until we try.”

Mercedes laughs pleasantly. “Goodbye, Sylvain.”

He shouts into the corridor as he goes: “Annie, I’m leaving!”

“Bye!” comes the response.

The passenger dorms are portside. Thomas’s door is shut, but he’s in there. Sylvain knocks twice. Thomas takes his sweet time answering. Eventually the door slides open and there he is in all black, outfit tighter than a wetsuit, with the battering ram attitude and the cheekbones and the freezer half-visible behind him. 

Sylvain’s current working theories about the contents of that freezer are: antibiotics, explosives, or organs. Black market breast milk has crossed his mind a few times. 

“What is it?” Thomas asks brusquely, stepping out into the corridor, blocking the door.

Message received. Sylvain backs up with a casual shrug. 

“We’re docking on Galatea in a couple minutes. It’s a quick drop-off, in and out. Everyone else should stay on the ship.”

“I wasn’t planning on leaving,” Thomas says. “What are you dropping off?”

“Some food, ice, the typical stuff they need delivered out here.”

“For the war effort?”

“As much as everything lately is for the war effort,” Sylvain says. 

Thomas cocks an eyebrow. “Supplying Galatea puts you in Cornelia’s crosshairs.”

“I’m really not trying to get involved in all that,” Sylvain says. “Seems messy, and I’m conflict averse.”

Thomas gives Sylvain an evaluating look. Ever since he paid his way aboard the _Scylla_ five days ago, every conversation so far has felt like a hunt. Each of them luring the other out from hiding in the brush. 

“Sure,” Thomas says archly. “I can tell that you prefer to play it safe.”

Sylvain grins. It’s a bad time to let himself get distracted. But what’s he gonna do, _not_ flirt? “That’s me,” he says. “Safe as houses.”

-

The drop-off site is a small outpost off of Galatea’s main starship base. Security’s tight both in the air and on the ground, but it’s all military, no customs agents, and their employer’s clearance code gets them through. The _Scylla_ lowers her landing gear a mile or two off-site. From there, Ashe drives the cargo truck across a barren expanse of cold, rocky desert. They hide their faces behind goggles and scarves to keep the high winds from tearing up their skin.

The outpost gate allows them inside. Behind it, there’s a welcome committee of four guards accompanying a uniformed woman with impeccable posture and short blonde hair. 

Sylvain pulls down his scarf, leans out of the truck window, and greets, “Captain.”

“It’s Major now,” says Ingrid with her arms crossed.

Actually less of a chilly reception than Sylvain’d imagined. “Congratulations on the promotion. This is Ashe, our pilot.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“You too, Major,” Ashe says. “Where do you want us to off-load?”

Ingrid directs their truck to the west hangar. Fifty crates of military rations, first aid, and hygiene products in bulk. Ten barrels of petroleum. All of it courtesy of the mighty and magnanimous Church of Seiros. 

“You’re a day behind schedule,” she says, after Sylvain jumps out of the truck to join her in the fire lane. 

“We had to make a pitstop on GM,” Sylvain says, pushing his goggles up into his hair. He watches as Ingrid’s people take over off-loading the cargo like a well-oiled machine. “The Agarthans are trying to tag all the transports that leave Zanado. We blew a valve when we boosted away.”

“We’ve already lost two ships this month,” Ingrid acknowledges wearily.

“Why isn’t Fraldarius supplying you themselves?”

Ingrid snorts. “Fraldarius is the front line. They don’t have the resources to spare.”

For three years Fraldarius has refused to stand down, still foaming at the mouth after Cornelia deposed what remained of the royal family. Everything that Faerghus is, militant and unforgiving in its fealty, Fraldarius is that ten times over. Maybe it’s because Fraldarius isn’t a planet but a moon, circling devotedly through Fhirdiad’s orbit, eternally dependent on its gravity. 

Galatea is another loyalist, stubborn in many of the same ways. For a while now it’s been one missed shipment away from losing the rebellion for good. It makes it easier for Ingrid to lower her standards about how the shipments get in. 

Sylvain’d seen her face in the emergency transmission, but it’s different seeing her in person again. She looks tired and all grown-up, a chrysalis of the girl he’d known before.

“How have you been?” he asks. “How’s your father?”

He knows as soon as he’s asking it that it’s not a good move. Ingrid keeps looking straight ahead as she says, “No, you gave up the right to ask me that.”

“Come on, I can’t be your friend anymore? I have to be a soldier in order to be your friend?”

“You have to _show up_.”

The strained atmosphere between them takes a plunge towards deadly. 

“I’m sorry,” Sylvain says. “You know that if anything made me want to stay, it was you.”

“What is that worth to me?” Ingrid says tightly.

Ashe shoots them a cautious glance from the driver’s seat. Sylvain tries to get his own expression back under control. 

It’s guilt, the hard and hollow thing thrumming inside his chest. She’d stuck by him when she had every reason not to and he’d repaid her by ditching her to face down war and starvation alone. And it’s hurt and it’s frustration too, that she doesn’t understand him and he can’t explain himself to her. 

“I know you’re sorry,” Ingrid continues, lower and more disciplined. “But I also thought that, once you knew you were needed, you would come back and fight.”

“I’ve had enough of fighting, Ingrid,” Sylvain says. 

“So instead you’d stand by as Cornelia tramples over your own homeland.”

“Cornelia’s an Agarthan puppet. Rhea and the Church are using Faerghus as a proxy. They’re all just fucking—outsourcing their war to you.”

“I’m not blind,” Ingrid says. “But the answer isn’t to leave everything to rot like you did.”

He wishes he could tell her: it was already rotten. When was it ever good? Sylvain was killing by the time he was sixteen years old. The last person he killed bled out at Sylvain’s feet. It was slow. There was a starburst of shrapnel buried in his chest and a long, jagged scar across his face. His body was mangled and mutated by whatever synthetic shit he’d allowed the Agarthans to pump into his bloodstream. And even lying there all fucked up and broken, even as he was dying on the floor, he still sneered into Sylvain’s blank face and held onto Sylvain’s ankle and said, “I’ll see you later, princess.”

He can’t. In the end he’d rather she think of him as a disloyal, irresponsible man, than know him as a monstrous one. 

He hears Ingrid breathe, slow and deliberate. Does she still do that to calm herself down? Anytime someone would say something she didn’t like, “you can’t” or “slow down” or “why bother”. She’d always drag air in through her nose, out through her mouth, three counts in, six counts out.

As the last of the crates are scanned and logged into inventory, Sylvain turns to her and says, “Send me a transmission if you need me again. It doesn’t matter for what, I’ll come. But I don’t want to keep arguing with you.”

Ingrid sighs. “You found a good crew?” she asks, after a moment.

You’re not alone out there? she’s asking. 

“Yeah,” Sylvain says, “a great one.”

She looks like she’s thinking about touching him, but doesn’t. Sylvain recognizes the instinct because he feels it too.

“The galaxy’s getting smaller every day,” she says instead. “You’re going to run out of places to hide.” 

-

“Everything alright, captain?” Ashe asks, as Sylvain climbs back into the truck’s passenger seat.

“Peachy,” Sylvain says. He tugs his scarf back up to cover his face. “Let’s get back home.”

-

Ultimately it’s Mercedes who reneges on their collective agreement not to ask Thomas any personal questions. 

But first she comes through on that promise of a drink. They share a fifth of gin and a deck of cards in the common area. Annette, who can never resist the siren of competition, comes out to play too.

Later into the evening, when Sylvain has lost all of his pocket money, Mercedes is a much richer woman, and Annette is a much drunker one, Thomas slips into the galley for a glass of water. He’s silent as a fox. Almost gets away unnoticed. 

“Would you like to join us?” Mercedes asks.

Thomas stops, turns, and regards their little party. “I don’t gamble.”

Sylvain pushes out an empty chair with his foot. Its legs scrape against the floor. “I’m sure we can work out a compromise.”

He smiles at Thomas crookedly. He’s a little drunk too. That shit with Ingrid left him feeling rough-edged. Booze and cards are how he sands himself back down. 

“Fine,” Thomas finally says. He sits down across from Sylvain, and Annette happily deals him in.

“Instead of wagering money, you could tell us about yourself,” Mercedes says. She’s such a menace sometimes and nobody else sees it. “What’s waiting for you in Derdriu, Thomas?”

“I have a job lined up,” Thomas says, without looking up from his cards. 

“And what do you do?”

Thomas does look up this time, unmoved by Mercedes’ serenity. “One question per betting round.”

But Thomas either isn’t good at poker or he’s having some bad cosmic luck. One way or another, he doesn’t win a single hand. They learn that: the “job” that “Thomas” has lined up is in private security contracting (for a lie, this one isn’t bad). Growing up, Thomas had a cat that ran away. Thomas once broke his arm. Thomas doesn’t like sweets. 

“What?” Annette says, affronted. Her cheeks are flushed from the gin. 

“I don’t like sweets,” Thomas repeats.

“Don’t say it _again_ ,” Annette snaps, as if the sweets can hear. 

Other bite-sized facts about Thomas: he was born somewhere in Faerghus (no shit). He has never gone on a spacewalk. He doesn’t have a favorite book. He does have a brother. This one, Sylvain doesn’t know if he believes. Thomas’s face remains neutral when he says it. 

And then, inevitably, everyone else’s luck runs out too, and Thomas wins with a pair of goddamn nines. “My turn to ask a question,” he says. 

Sylvain leans back in his chair. “Honestly it shouldn’t be anyone’s turn. That was a pathetic showing from all of us.”

“Why’d you name your ship after a sea monster?”

Instantly, Mercedes gets a bright glint in her eyes. “That’s a wonderful question, Thomas.” 

“Hey now,” Sylvain protests, “two against one isn’t fair.”

Annette joins in as she shuffles and cuts the deck: “Three against one! I’ve been dying to know too.”

“You’ve heard this before,” Sylvain says. 

“No,” Annette accuses, “you always just say Scylla was the name of your ex-wife.”

“Why can’t that be true? Why is it so unbelievable to you that someone would marry me?”

Annette looks ready to go down an alphabetized list of exactly why. Thomas cuts in first: “What’s the actual reason?”

Sylvain weighs his response, then figures fuck it, why not.

“It all depends on the poet, right?” he says. “In the early texts, Scylla’s mom is the goddess of dangerous seas, and Scylla is just one of a whole brood of monsters. She’s born as a plague on mankind.

“But the later myths say Scylla was once a young girl, who was really sweet and lighthearted. She would hang out with all the other nymphs in the ocean, doing cute nymph stuff. And then one day this man—this god—saw her bathing, and he fell in love with her.”

He takes a moment, not because he’s forgotten how the story goes, but because it’s hard to tell this next part right. 

“The god wanted her so much, even though she ran and hid away from him. So he asked the witch Circe for a way to make her love him back.

“This only made Circe jealous. So Circe went and poisoned the tide pool that Scylla bathed in, and while Scylla was standing there in the water, she started to change. She grew a fish tail, and a ring of six wolf heads sprouted around her waist, and each head had a long neck like a serpent, and was—hungry, and angry, and howling. Her legs turned into a bunch of tentacles. And she looked at herself and realized that she’d kept her face but below the water she’d turned into a monster.”

Nobody says anything. They’re all just looking at him. Mercedes’ troubled frown, Thomas’s eyes sharp as a switchblade.

Sylvain concludes: “Now she’s forever trapped on a rock, driven mad with self-loathing, tearing apart any ship that sails too close. The end.”

He pours himself another inch of gin. His throat feels dusty. 

Mercedes speaks up first. “That’s an unhappy story to name your home after.” 

“I guess so, huh,” Sylvain says, smiling. 

He’s uncomfortable. He shouldn’t have said any of that bullshit. Annette saves him by redealing the cards. 

“It’s an awful story,” she says softly. “I’d almost rather be flying around in your ex-wife.”

They play another round, then everyone retires to bed. Mercedes and Annette head right; Sylvain goes left with Thomas. The _Scylla_ is never quiet. She creaks and rumbles below their feet as Ashe charts a course out of the Faerghus sector. The captain’s quarters are further down the corridor, but Sylvain stops walking when Thomas does. 

“In that story you told,” Thomas says, “who are you supposed to be?”

“You already used up your question,” Sylvain says.

Thomas stands at the door to his room. The corridor is dark, the lighting low and intimate. “I’ll answer one of yours. Fair trade.”

What’s in the freezer? What’s your real name? But Sylvain gazes into Thomas’s intent face and just finds himself asking, “Do you and your brother get along?”

Thomas’s lips part, startled. There’s a glimmer in those eyes. Sylvain wants to lean in closer to get a better look.

“Yes,” Thomas says, a little roughly. 

The spell breaks.

“Then it’s just a story,” Sylvain says. “‘night Tommy.”

Inside his captain’s quarters, Sylvain sits on his bunk, pushes both hands through his hair, and rubs the back of his neck.

Fuck, man. Long day.

After a stretch of time, he digs out the small wooden box he keeps under the bed. He pops open the clasp and finds the two sets of dog tags, buried under old papers and mementos. The shit Sylvain just can’t seem to leave behind on earth.

To answer Thomas’s question: it depends on the poet. Some days Sylvain can believe that he’s the god trampling selfishly across the world. He’s the nymph, poisoned by another’s jealousy. Some days he’s the ship devoured in the jaws of a wolf head, and other days he’s the beast.

He swings his legs up onto the bed and lies all the way back against the thin mattress. The metal catches in the light as he holds one pair of tags against his palm. He studies the textured scratches and embossed lettering. The discoloration where the blood permanently rusted the steel because Sylvain hadn’t cleaned it off fast enough. You wear one tag around your neck, one in your left boot, so that even if your head gets separated from your leg, whoever’s reporting casualties will still be able to identify each soldier’s serial number, their blood type, their name. 

Like AB negative, and M. A. Gautier.


	3. matters of the blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew combats cabin fever.

Ten days later sees the _Scylla_ crossing over into the Leicester sector. The moment they leave Faerghus, it feels like someone has taken their boot off Sylvain’s throat. 

Minus the stopover on Galatea, they’ve been flying for two weeks straight. The traditional cabin fever symptoms emerge. Mercedes and Annette have a series of petty arguments, a basic thematic rehash of last year’s “you care about me in ways I don’t always respond well to!” and “we’ve known each other long enough now that we’re growing a bit lazy and thoughtless towards one another!” Dedue stops shaving. Ashe starts strength training. Sylvain deep-cleans the entire ship.

He disinfects the galley where Mercedes is baking her feelings, then the cockpit where Annette is hiding out and playing music. Next on the list is the cargo bay, where Ashe is doing bench press exercises while Dedue spots him. 

Thomas is blocking the catwalk. He’s perched at the top of the metal stairway to the cargo bay, sharpening his knife. It’s a 440C Zoltan, high-end tactical shit for a speed demon.

At least he stopped pretending he isn’t armed. 

“There are more comfortable places to sit,” Sylvain says. 

“I’m fine right here,” Thomas says, his attention fixed on the glide of his blade across the oiled whetstone. Perfect 22 degree angle. It’s practically erotic.

Internally, Sylvain has labelled this as Thomas’s phase two. Phase one was the first week when he’d prowled around like a secretive, nocturnal creature. Phase two now is Thomas hanging out in the open, exploring the corners of his new territory, expanding the boundaries of his trust. 

Sylvain calls down below: “How much longer until we reach Sauin?”

Ashe sits upright on the old weight bench. “Two more days,” he calls back up. His gaze shifts onto Thomas, and he smiles encouragingly. “Then we can all stretch our legs.”

Sylvain adds, “Sauin’s a small border moon. It orbits right outside Gloucester’s ring system.”

“Okay,” Thomas says, like he doesn’t know why Sylvain is telling him this.

“I’m just saying, it doesn’t get much notice from the feds.” 

“Sounds troublesome.” 

“The locals are pretty friendly, actually. If you’re feeling restless and want to get some fresh air before Derdriu, you could do worse than Sauin.”

Sylvain doesn’t know how much more insinuation he can inject into his voice without coming straight out and saying: hey, you’re a criminal? What a coincidence, I’m also a criminal! This moon too is crawling with other criminals!

But then Thomas glances up with this sardonic little look and says, “I know where Sauin is.”

It’s _almost_ like he’s messing with Sylvain. It’s a good look on Thomas, the shadow of playfulness, like a shell opening with the rhythm of the ocean and the moonlight. 

“You spend a lot of time in Leicester?” Sylvain asks, leaning against the catwalk railing.

Thomas lifts a shoulder. “I can read a map.”

“You’re not going to learn what a place is really like from a map.”

“A map would tell you that it shouldn’t take two weeks to travel a one-week itinerary.”

“We take some creative routes.” Routes that Ashe plots meticulously to avoid law enforcement patrols. “It’s a good opportunity for sight-seeing.”

“Cut the shit,” Thomas scoffs.

“You first,” Sylvain says, with his best sunny grin. 

Thomas frowns abruptly and turns back to his knife. Sylvain can’t see his face anymore, but there’s a pink flush creeping slowly down the back of Thomas’s neck.

An incoherent cabin-feverish thought fires through Sylvain’s brain: _Lick it._

He douses out that impulse swiftly.

Luckily this is when Annette’s music reaches brand new heights. Sylvain winces. He peers down into Dedue’s meaningful expression and Ashe’s pained one, fifteen feet below the catwalk.

“Alright, this is over,” he says. “Get everyone in here and let’s settle this.”

-

“Settling it” means one hollow rubber tire hanging on chains from the cargo bay ceiling, one large ball, and two teams: Annette, Thomas, and Ashe versus Mercedes, Sylvain, and Dedue.

“We play to twenty-one points,” Sylvain says, “whoever wins wins, and when the game’s over, the fight’s over. No more sulking, okay?”

“Okay,” Annette says sulkily.

“Of course,” Mercedes says, tying her thick blonde hair back. She’s overdue for a cut. Her hair is touching her shoulders for the first time in a year.

The game starts off lukewarm: half-hearted attempts from Ashe to steal the ball; Thomas looking bored; Mercedes’ allergy to physical exertion. But Sylvain knows what makes his crew tick. Fifteen seconds of him and Dedue going back and forth, tossing the ball high over Annette’s head, not even trying to score, just making Annette jump for it—and finally Annette shouts, “ _Sylvain!_ ” 

From there, it’s unmitigated chaos. Some feature highlights:

1) When Sylvain jumps up to dunk the ball through the tire and then hangs off of it and does a pull-up. Mercedes, who is _on his team_ , boos at him.

2) When Ashe uses all that new muscle to wrestle the ball out of Dedue’s grip with surprising belligerence. Comprehension lights up Thomas’s face. It makes sense that Thomas would be a lightning-fast competitive animal with strategically bony elbows. After that, Team Tall can’t hold onto a lead for longer than a minute at a time. Ashe looks on, starry-eyed, as Thomas pivots like a river around Sylvain to shoot the ball and dropkick Sylvain’s pride into outer space.

3) When Dedue gets mobbed by shorties so he swoops an arm around both Annette and Ashe, holding them trapped against his chest. Still manages to make the shot with his free hand, laughing his rare, rich laugh. 

4) When Thomas lets Annette get on his shoulders to score, so Sylvain lets Mercedes get on his shoulders right back. The two of them fight over the rebound in mid-air until Sylvain sees Annette give in to the giggles and hears Mercedes say, “oh, Annie,” and then they’re both hugging. Mercedes’ weight pitches forward with a suddenness that makes Sylvain have to take another two steps closer to Thomas. Thomas’s brow furrows as he concentrates on keeping Annette balanced. His forehead is sweaty, his hair a soft mess. His mouth is making a shape that Sylvain hasn’t seen it make before.

5) When the _Scylla_ hits a bump and Annette accidentally slams Sylvain against one of the crates and a ragged metal edge rips through the meat of Sylvain’s right arm.

Mercedes’ side conversation with Dedue gets cut off with a gasp. Sylvain’s t-shirt splatters with blood. Son of a fucking— _fuck_ that really hurts.

Annette’s face is white. “Oh god, captain, oh god I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay,” Sylvain grits through his teeth. He wraps his left palm over the side of his forearm and maintains pressure. “Uh, Mercedes?”

“Right here,” Mercedes says, by his side. “Shall we take a trip to the infirmary together?”

Sylvain feels his blood already reacting, drumming under his skin. It’s making him nauseous. 

Dedue places a hand on Annette’s shaking shoulder. The ball is tucked securely under his other arm. “Annette and I will clean up.”

“Go check on the ship,” Sylvain tells Ashe. “Make sure that turbulence was nothing serious. Hey, it’s just a scratch. Mercie’s got me, I’m fine.”

Ashe’s eyes are large, the tilt of his mouth unhappy, but he goes.

Sylvain is fine. His own body will make sure of it. Even now the wound glitters with energy under his sticky hand. He presses down even harder. He lets the pain deepen and bloom. Mercedes guides him by the arm that isn’t carved up and dripping everywhere.

And then there’s Thomas off to the side, watching him go. Sylvain’s stomach drops. Busted. 

-

There are multiple ways to tell a creation story.

The universe is born in the messy and extraordinary way that all things are born. First there’s chaos, and that chaos coalesces and grows hot. From heat comes energy and light. From light comes life and then death. The explosion of the first star seeds cosmic matter across the nascent universe. From death, more life. When humanity is birthed forth, the dust of those primordial celestial bodies, that residue of elemental power, finds its way inside the blood of the special few. “My starboy,” was his mother’s pet name for him in his youth. 

Let’s try another: at some point in ancient history, in return for their service, the Goddess bestows upon ten fearsome and loyal warriors a handsome gift. Their blood is anointed, their future children blessed with miraculous strength and health and proclivity for war. His father tells him, in no uncertain terms, “Do not waste your inheritance.” Sylvain slacks off, he sleeps around, but he’s a good soldier so he’s the good son. Killing takes some amount of talent. This is Sylvain’s divine birthright: to invade, to defend, to be the gun aimed by a father’s hand. 

How about one more: blood is merely cells and plasma. No blood is so touched by the stars or the gods that it can’t be reverse-engineered by science and man. Sick of feeling like the black sheep of the family? Life ruined by a biological dice roll? Do the Agarthans have the perfect product for you! Miklan sells out his home for a taste. All his war profiteering is enough to buy him an IV in the arm. By the time Sylvain tracks him down on daddy’s orders to put a bullet through his brain, Miklan has nearly finished the job himself, his veins poisoned and black. _I’ll see you later, princess._

Who gives a shit where crests came from. At the end of the day, some people are born lucky. Sylvain wins the genetic lottery. For as long as he’s lived he’s paid it back out of his own flesh. He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop paying.

-

“Give it to me straight, nurse,” Sylvain says, sitting on the infirmary bed. “Am I going to live?”

“It was touch-and-go for a few moments,” Mercedes says with a twinkle, “but I believe you’ll survive. How does it feel?”

“Sore,” Sylvain says. Eight stitches for a tied ball game. He’s done far worse damage before. “Thanks for the patch-up. Who knows what kind of shape I’d be in without you.”

Mercedes finishes applying the bandage over his stitches and breezes through the verbal instructions. It’s a well-learned routine by now: keep it dry, keep it elevated. Don’t pop your stitches or Mercedes will be very upset. Perhaps try getting hurt less often.

“This one wasn’t my fault,” Sylvain complains. Besides, Annette has gotten into some nasty accidents in the engine room too. 

“Annie wasn’t bleeding out from her gut when I first met her,” Mercedes says.

True, the Remire deal had gone south. It was a hazard of the job. You delivered the cargo you were being paid to deliver and all of a sudden your employer no longer wanted to pay you. Sylvain couldn’t be blamed for that. He couldn’t be blamed for shielding Ashe from that bullet with his own intestines either. How was he going to flee the planet with a dead pilot? 

Mercedes is hearing none of it. “Honey,” she says, “I’m not saying you’re pulling the trigger yourself. But you certainly don’t step out of the way fast enough.”

She cups the side of Sylvain’s face. “And what shape would we be in without you?”

She’d still be on Remire. The abridged version of how she’d ended up there in the first place: bad luck and bad men.

The rest of the crew could’ve landed on their feet, though. Maybe Annette would’ve been a little lonelier. Ashe, a little more purposeless. Dedue wouldn’t be able to send as much money back to Kleiman every month. 

Ashe’s mild voice clicks on over the intercom. “We brushed up against some space trash, but everything looks normal otherwise. This next song is dedicated to the captain. Wishing him a speedy recovery.”

The song that filters through the sound system is pure warmth and joy, enough that Sylvain can’t not smile down at his lap. An apology from Annette: _Some have traveled far and wide, some have given up and died, for the love of a sweet-lovin’ man_.

-

Mercedes has been gone for under a minute when the infirmary doors slide open and close again. 

Thomas is back in prowling mode. He must’ve waited deliberately for Mercedes to leave. He walks around the perimeter of the infirmary as if he’s on a recon mission, studying Sylvain with caution in his face and a dangerous edge in his sleek frame like they’re back at square one. 

Sylvain sits there feeling overexposed and on the defensive. In no way is he ready to have this talk. To stack another card on top of the delicately balanced house he’s managed to build here.

“Your crew is fond of you,” Thomas comments, the fucking eavesdropper.

“I pay ‘em,” Sylvain says. Then adds, less flatly, “It goes both ways.”

Thomas makes up his mind. He approaches the bed and sits on the medical stool. He holds Sylvain’s gaze and reaches down to his boot and pulls out that 440C Zoltan.

“Whoa,” Sylvain jerks straight up, “listen, whatever it is, we can talk it out—”

Thomas ignores him and uses the tip of the knife to nick his palm. The motion is quick and shallow. Blood wells up from the cut. He doesn’t even flinch. 

A familiar hazy glow ripples against Thomas’s hand. Fast enough to be mistaken for a trick of the light. 

“Huh,” Sylvain manages. His adrenaline crashes and leaves him lightheaded. He did _not_ see that one coming.

Thomas grabs a white surgical towel to clean off the knife and his hand. “Yeah.”

Sylvain takes a minute, internalizing this new information. It feels both uncomplicated and enormous, like an animal recognizing its reflection for the very first time. 

“That was pretty dramatic,” he eventually says.

Thomas flushes a remarkable color again. Tension drains from his shoulders. “Shut up.”

Sylvain isn’t saying he doesn’t appreciate the weird and bloody gesture. Thomas doesn’t come across like somebody who’s thoughtless with his own privacy, or wasteful with his kindness. 

“So I show you mine, you show me yours,” Sylvain says. “That’s all? No interrogation?”

“Why would I interrogate you?” Thomas says, sheathing his knife. His hand has already stopped actively bleeding. If he’s anything like Sylvain, the reddened scar will heal and become soft and pale within a couple days.

“Most people would want to know why someone like me,” Sylvain waves a hand for emphasis, “is bumming around on a third-rate piece of junk like this.”

“Do whatever you want,” Thomas says plainly. “It’s blood. It’s not a leash.” 

Sylvain looks at Thomas and has another batshit insane thought: where were you when I was a kid? Would I have turned out any different?

“That brother you mentioned, does he have a crest too?”

“No,” Thomas says. “But I have a—” and he hesitates, fights with it, and doesn’t finish whatever he was going to say. “I know someone else who does,” he says instead. 

“My brother didn’t either,” Sylvain says. He hadn’t meant to go there, but now he’s wading into it anyway, further out among the jagged rocks. “When I was little, I always thought that if I could just give it to him, then we could both get what we wanted.” 

He shrugs. “Anyway, he’s dead now.”

It sounded more casual in his head. The way that Thomas is looking back at him strikes Sylvain somewhere unprotected. It’d be better if the infirmary was a little darker, a little less naked and bright.

“Mine too,” Thomas says. “A long time ago.”

Sylvain doesn’t call Thomas out on the earlier present tense.

“Sorry,” Sylvain says genuinely. “You seem like you really liked him.”

Thomas doesn’t respond to that right away. He seems unsure. When he opens his mouth again, it’s only to say, “Your ship isn’t third-rate.”

A surprised smile crosses Sylvain’s face. He forgot it isn’t just him who’s been getting to know Thomas across a span of two weeks. Thomas has been getting to know Sylvain right back.

“Wanna dance?” he asks.

“No,” Thomas says immediately. “What?”

“Come on,” Sylvain says. “Annie’s doing such a good job DJing.”

Thomas glares when Sylvain stands up and offers out a hand, the one attached to his non-fucked-up arm. But it’s growing easier to translate the different glares from each other. _I guess_ , this glare says.

Thomas rises and takes Sylvain’s hand with his own. Sylvain puts his other hand on Thomas’s waist and keeps watching as gradually Thomas’s expression dissolves and opens up to softness. He watches the new shape of Thomas’s mouth. The music plays and they dance for a while, swaying back and forth, floating along with the gravity of the tide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [sweet-lovin' man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NcCxHs7h88)   
> 


	4. forgery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New opportunities and revelations on Sauin.

Every time Sylvain visits Sauin, there’s always a pool shark who thinks they can hustle him. “It’s your face,” says Ashe, ex-hustler. “And your—” he motions apologetically at Sylvain’s entire being.

Sylvain is well aware. He has a certain look and he plays it up in places like this. Friendly and drunk and cocky. Easy to take advantage of. 

Tonight’s shark, a woman with a long red ponytail and a coy little smile, loses the first two games. She lets Sylvain take her to school with eight stitches in his right arm, and gosh, she’s such a lousy shot, she’s still learning how to play, but won’t he give her a chance to earn back her money? How about a new bet: fifty per ball? 

“Of course, baby,” Sylvain says with a sloppy grin. “We can play as long as you like.”

Fifteen minutes later when he doesn’t come back from the bar, she finds him flirting up a storm with a different woman—brunette, sexy voice, and stacked. Ponytail is _furious_. What about our game?

“Right, yeah,” is all Sylvain says, distracted by Dorothea-Lite tracing a fingertip along his bicep.

Ashe jumps to the rescue: sorry about him, he gets like this when he drinks. Here, I’ll sub in, okay? Same bet and everything.

Ponytail sizes Ashe up, says fine. Ashe beams. As a mark, he’s even better: he’s smaller, shyer, seems happy just to be talking to a girl. 

Then he gets a pool cue in his hands and tucks his hair behind his ear and cleans the fucking house. 

Sylvain’s logic is that they’re just hustling other hustlers. That’s the only way to entice Ashe into playing along. Whatever money they win goes into the tip jar. It’s a good excuse, too, to give Dedue and Mercedes some privacy over there at their pub table, the two of them talking and smiling in the glow of yellow light bouncing off the frosted windows. Plus the con is tougher to pull off with Dedue hanging around. He’s too intimidating. Screams _sharks beware._

Ashe returns soon enough. He pays the whole crew’s tab, tips five hundred on top of that, and asks, “Where’d your new friend go?”

“She got tired of me,” Sylvain says. Didn’t have Real-Dorothea’s mean streak, or the captivating way she could smile two different smiles at the same time. “Ponytail?”

“Extremely unhappy,” Ashe says. “We should go.”

He looks guilty, and kind of smug and satisfied, and another layer of guilty for being smug and satisfied. 

Sylvain laughs, “I’ll tell the lovebirds.”

On his way across the pub, he bumps into a guy who apologizes, then stops and gives Sylvain another longer look and says, “Hey man, do I know you from somewhere?” 

“You don’t, sorry,” Sylvain says, trying to squeeze past. 

“No, you look familiar,” the guy insists. Not hostile, just determined. He’s got a drunken glint in his eyes like a dog with a bone. “Where do I know you from?”

“I’m not from around here, buddy,” Sylvain says. “Can I get through?” 

Now there’s a tight grip on Sylvain’s arm. “Hey hold on, let me figure it out.”

Being grabbed like this is the fastest way to make Sylvain shut down. All his reflexive warmth ices over when he feels trapped. The guy senses that, lets go, and then something dawns in his expression as he realizes exactly where he knows Sylvain from.

In that second Sylvain knows too. Nobody looks at Sylvain this way who didn’t see him on Conand: the death in his face, the lightning flash of his crest illuminating the bloodbath.

“Is there a problem?” comes Dedue’s flinty voice.

The guy turns around to see the wall of muscle that is Dedue’s chest, then back towards Sylvain. He stares at him, spooked. “No problem,” he mutters. “Sorry man.”

The guy fucks off. Sylvain realizes he hasn’t actually inhaled in a minute, and fixes that. 

“Captain,” Dedue says.

He tries to shake himself out of the grimy muck of his own memory. Every positive emotion has been scoured from his body. 

“Ashe paid the tab,” Sylvain says. “I’m gonna head back early. Will you tell everyone I said goodnight? Tell them I’m sorry?”

“Of course.” The way Dedue touches him is different, mercifully tender. “Get some rest.”

-

While everyone else pays for a room when they’re docked, Annette prefers to sleep on the ship. “I just like it,” she’s tried to explain before. “I’m used to the noise. It’s too quiet without it, and then everything else sounds ten times louder.”

Sometimes Sylvain will find someone to go home with. Dorothea almost always lets him crash with her when they stop by Garreg Mach. But Annette is onto something: it’s only when Sylvain sleeps on the ship that he doesn’t feel like he’s sleeping alone.

The _Scylla_ has an observation deck, a small one right on the ship’s bow. It’s a crescent shaped room with a plain metal bench, wide curved windows and a skylight. When you’re flying, you can see out into the black vacuum of space. When you’re docked on land, you can still see the stars.

It’s already occupied. Annette is curled under a blanket, asleep. Thomas sits beside her on the floor, watching the view outside.

If Sylvain has to have company right now, it may as well be someone else who’s also hiding.

“Were you two stargazing together?” Sylvain asks. That’s a cute image.

Thomas doesn’t startle. He must’ve heard Sylvain enter. “She was showing me her favorite constellations.” 

Sylvain sits on the other side of Annette and pulls the blanket more snugly around her shoulders. Reminds himself of his own capacity to be gentle. “Anything good?” 

“Loog is visible tonight,” Thomas says. Everywhere else it’s just The Lion’s Head. Only people from Faerghus call it Loog, the brightest piece of their winter sky.

Sylvain lies all the way down, arms folded behind his head. Here on Sauin, space and marine traffic all share the same port. Everything’s open, facing the sea. Beyond the ships, the dark water is moving choppily, wind blowing across the surface and forming waves. Sylvain can see his own partial reflection high up in the windows. He glances over towards Thomas instead.

“So how does this compare to back home? Charon?”

Sylvain knows it’s a wrong guess from the way Thomas doesn’t tense up or fluster. 

“The weather’s better,” Thomas says. “Annette asked me to accompany her to the waterfront tomorrow.”

Sylvain is pretty sure Annette simply invited Thomas into town with her and Mercedes, but Thomas makes it sound like she hired him to be their bodyguard. “Have fun. Try to get them to eat something besides dessert.”

Thomas grunts back a response. The restless quiet drifts on for a while longer. The deeper waters churn turbulently beneath the surface. 

“You’re from Faerghus too, aren’t you,” Thomas speaks up after some time. 

No use denying it. “What gave it away?” Sylvain asks.

“How much you hated being there, back on Galatea,” Thomas says, which coaxes half a grin out of Sylvain. He reclines himself too, getting down onto Sylvain’s level. “When did you leave?”

“Five or six years ago, before the rebellion really got going.”

“And now you’re a cargo-runner.”

“It’s a living,” Sylvain says. “What were you before you were—” what was Thomas’s cover again? “—a security contractor?”

Thomas shifts, deliberating, then admits: “A soldier.”

Yeah, that’s what Sylvain figured. He rolls onto his side, Annette lying peacefully between them. “There’s no war to fight in Derdriu.”

At this point Leicester is the only sector that has successfully resisted getting pulled into Thales and Rhea’s blood-soaked interplanetary drama. Too busy with internal squabbles and in-fighting, as the new Riegan senator expertly stokes the fires. 

In profile, Thomas’s expression is hard to decipher. “It’ll reach Derdriu one way or another, if Cornelia finishes carving Faerghus to pieces.”

He rolls over too, his eyes meeting Sylvain’s. Sylvain moves a little closer, Goddess he just can’t help himself. It’s the lighthouse on the bay: _This way, over here. You’re not alone._

“You know, I’ve played at being a soldier before,” Sylvain says. “So far cargo-runner’s a much better gig.”

“The war will reach your ship eventually too,” Thomas tells him. He sounds like Ingrid, a thornier and more disillusioned version. They probably wouldn’t get along.

“There’s always a war,” Sylvain says. “There’ll be another war after this one. We’ll run out of ice before we run out of reasons to go to war.”

“That doesn’t make you angry?” Thomas asks.

Sure it does. A long time ago Sylvain taught himself to swallow down every lick of anger until it scorched him up on the inside and he could confuse that sensation for numbness. “You’re not tired of being angry?” he asks in return.

Thomas doesn’t answer. After a while he turns onto his back again and gazes up at the glittering lion’s head. 

-

It’s rumored that seven years ago, Leonie Pinelli tracked a bounty across Leicester until they both ended up in a no-name tavern. Classic standoff: he had his gun against the bartender’s temple and she had hers aimed right between his eyes. Leonie Pinelli, the rumors also say, hates collateral damage and loves a good dark liquor. So she challenged the guy to a drinking contest. If she lost, she’d leave him alone and keep all the other freelancers off his tail too. If he lost, he’d behave and let her cuff him.

It was a slaughter. Afterwards Leonie cuffed the guy’s unconscious wrist to the table, paid for everyone else’s next round, and kept drinking. 

When Leonie Pinelli cut ties with her freelancers guild to start her own business, the guild put a price on her head like some kind of jilted lover. She hunkered down in the woods for three days with a shotgun, a backup arms cache, and a bottle of scotch as her former colleagues came flying in over the red horizon. Three days later the guild issued a retraction. 

Leonie Pinelli once shot a man on Gloucester just to watch him die. 

“Are you talking about the Weathervane? First of all, that was a paid hit,” Leonie told Sylvain. “Secondly, not to be an asshole, but Acheron was an opportunistic coward. I would’ve done that job for free. You know I ran into Gloucester’s son a month later and he shook my hand and _thanked_ me?”

Leonie Pinelli, stranded on an ice planet, killed a bear with her bare hands and wore its hide to stay warm. 

“No way,” Leonie said, laughing. “There was an old science station, so I just stayed inside until the blizzard was over and I could repair my ship. I’d never do that to a bear. They’re smart animals.”

Leonie Pinelli once ran into a burning tenement with six trapped children, and emerged from the fire having rescued seven.

“That one’s true!” Leonie said. “I found a kid squatting in the attic space that nobody knew about.”

The size of her reputation is matched by her resume. She’d been one of the top freelancers in the game, and now she’s gunning for best middlewoman this side of the Oghma belt. Sauin, like the majority of Leicester planets and moons, is covered in forests and freshwater. Secret underground passageways connect the waterfront to a network of storage basements. The honest goods come in through the port. The dirty ones get moved through the tunnels. Leonie fences the merchandise, takes a healthy cut, and invests back into the infrastructure of the moon that raised her: electricity, schools, halfway houses, hospitals, and local institutions like _Raphael’s_. 

Raphael runs an unfussy watering hole with his little sister. The drinks are good, catered to Leonie’s tastes. It’s the bar food that really shines, rich and hearty and comforting. “I wanna make grown men miss their mamas,” Raphael declares, in his warm booming voice. 

Leonie conducts her business in the office upstairs. Raphael pats them down at the door, unburdens them of their pistols. Then he lets them through with a promise to prepare some brisket sandwiches to-go. 

“I’m trying out a new smoking method. You and the kids are gonna love it.”

“Our kids,” Sylvain mouths back at Dedue. 

Dedue’s lips twitch. Annette and Ashe used to call them mom and dad behind their backs, until the day Ashe slipped up at dinner and called Dedue “mom” right to his face instead, then blushed a horrified cherry red. “I’m dad?” Sylvain said. “I can’t be dad. I want to be mom.”

“No, Dedue is mom,” Annette said, patting Ashe’s shoulder like she was putting out a fire. “You’re definitely dad.”

“Dad does suit you better, captain,” Dedue said.

The joke died down after another week, to Ashe’s relief. Sylvain was grateful too. It was funny, and he knew the way they meant it, that it was different from how Sylvain would mean it. But he couldn’t help his own uneasiness, knowing they thought of him like that. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who would transform a house into a battlefield. Who oversaw one war at the galaxy border and a second one at home where you fought for survival in your own bedroom, and the kitchens, and the winding staircases. Who loved you best when you showed him you were capable of hurting someone else. 

-

The new job is straightforward: Leonie has a friend, some artsy painter type. He’s good, enough to earn back more than minimal expenses, but years later he still hasn’t yet found a foothold and he’s starting to feel stuck. Then, lo and behold, he discovers that he’s also a talented forger. He has an impressionist knockoff sitting in his studio that he believes could deceive any expert authenticator. He just has no clue how to get rid of it. If Sylvain transports the fake safely back to Leonie, she can fence it to one of her auction house connections for up to seven figures. Sylvain and his crew get 5%.

“I’ll pay you a quarter up front,” Leonie says. This is her standard rate; actually better, because she likes the _Scylla_. They’re punctual, they’ve never tried to cheat her, they’ve never lost any of her shit to feds or other scavengers or the random entropy of space. 

“How about forty?” Sylvain asks anyway.

Dedue, standing behind him, shifts his weight. From him, that’s a huge reaction.

“You know that’s not how this works,” Leonie says with a sharp smile.

Sylvain smiles back. “C’mon, Pinelli. I got mouths to feed.”

Leonie shakes her head and turns to Dedue. “What’s he doing? Why is he trying to piss me off?”

Dedue just shrugs. “I’m wondering that as well,” he responds blandly.

“Thirty-five,” Sylvain says. “Thirty and a favor.”

“A quarter,” Leonie repeats, but then she leans back in her chair, with a look like she’s finally caught a whiff of the game that Sylvain’s playing. “What’s the favor?”

It’s a thought that Sylvain has been scratching at for the past day now, an inflamed rash on the surface of his brain.

“Do you still keep up with the bulletins?” he asks.

Leonie’s eyebrows shoot up. “Are you trying to get into freelancing?”

“Nah, that’s not for me,” Sylvain says. There’s no fun in bounty hunting and killing for money when he’s already had the experience of killing for everything else, obligation and familial love. “I just want to match a face to a name.”

“A sweetheart who got away?”

“Something like that.”

After another moment of consideration, Leonie grabs her tablet off her desk.

“A quarter and a name,” she says. “Consider it a bonus for your history of jobs well done. But you try to wrangle me again, Sylvain, and I’ll wrangle your tongue out of your skull.”

Dedue’s body language hardens, protective mama bear that he is, but Sylvain says, “That’s fair.”

“Give me some search parameters, then.”

“Faerghus, male, somewhere in his twenties. Posted within the last month.”

Leonie scrolls down the list, narrowing it down, then projects the results up into the space between them. A blue shimmering hologram with the headshots arranged in a grid, each with a name and a transgression and a reward amount. Sylvain goes row by row. He isn’t sure what he’s hoping to find. The faces are hazy and distorted in the places where light refracts off the dust motes floating around the office. 

“Do you see your man?” Leonie asks.

Oh yeah, Sylvain sees him. Bottom left corner. The hair’s different, the cheeks are more youthful, but there’s a golden forest fire in those eyes.

And, turns out, Thomas is _not_ his fucking name.

Leonie drinks in the look on Sylvain’s face and says, amused, “He did a real number on you, didn’t he.”

-

They make it back to the _Scylla_ with a new job, two bags of mouth-watering brisket, and a tornado inside Sylvain’s head. 

Ashe sees them approaching across the dock and waves. “How’d it go with Leonie?” 

“All good,” Sylvain says. “Dedue has the new coordinates.”

He does a quick scan: there’s Annette returning with Thomas, carrying a mountain of confectionaries. Mercedes is in the cargo bay with a girl he’s never seen before, younger than even Annette, dirty blonde hair twisted into two loose braids. 

“Who’s that?” he asks.

Ashe looks nervous. “I met her this morning. She lost her parents and she’s trying to get to Bergliez to meet up with her big brother. Sorry, captain, I offered her a ride—”

“Yeah, sure,” Sylvain says. He can’t deal with another variable right now. “We’ll talk about it later. Are we ready to go?”

They need to get back in the air. The longer they stay docked, the more likely it is that the ground is going to crumble under the weight of the massive fucking _fugitive_ that Sylvain has allowed to hide away on his ship.

“Come,” Dedue tells Ashe, “let’s prepare the ship.”

Dedue is too tactful for _I told you so_ ’s. He gathers up Annette too, leaving Thomas to meet Sylvain on the entry ramp alone.

It’s one thing to be an army deserter. That’s a court martial, a dishonorable discharge, a few months in prison. But Sylvain just jumped headfirst into the ocean thinking it was a puddle.

He keeps his shoulders relaxed and shoves it all down. He smiles at Thomas. “How was the waterfront?”

“Crowded,” Thomas says, instantly sensing the change between them. 

“Mercedes got a haircut,” Sylvain comments.

“She did.”

“Have you ever thought about growing yours out long?”

“Not really,” Thomas says.

“Shame,” Sylvain says. “It’d be a good look for you, Fraldarius.”

That’s all it takes. Sylvain has never seen someone reach for their weapon so fast. 

_There you are_ , Sylvain thinks.

Felix Fraldarius says, in a voice harder than the knife he has pressed against Sylvain’s ribs: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Easy now,” Sylvain says. “You stand so close to me, everyone’s gonna get the wrong idea.”

Felix just presses in even closer. Sylvain can feel the pattern of his breathing: angry, scared. Join the club.

“We’re not having this conversation out here in the open,” Sylvain says lowly. “You want to get to Derdriu, I’ll take you. Just know that now _I know_ the size of the giant fucking target you’ve painted on my crew’s back.”

Felix bristles. His hand remains steady. He’s playing out what will happen if he bolts. He’s not going to, all of his belongings and stolen government property worth _ten million_ are still onboard, but if Sylvain is someone who goes blank when threatened, Felix seems to be the opposite, growling and showing his teeth. 

“Get on the ship,” Sylvain says. “Trust me.”

Felix’s whole body is a tensed muscle. His eyes flash with fierce vulnerability. It’s the same look that bought him a key through Sylvain’s door in the first place. 

For one long moment Felix doesn’t move, just stands there three inches away from Sylvain’s face. He could go in for a kiss as easily as a knife wound.

Then he whips past Sylvain and gets on the fucking ship.

The world jolts back into motion.

Sylvain gets his legs back under himself. The lucky thing about a shady moon like Sauin is that nobody even notices.

Ingrid really wasn’t kidding. The galaxy keeps shrinking down around Sylvain, backing him into a corner. He slams his fist against the airlock controls and listens to the entry ramp rising, the cargo bay doors closing behind him. Five minutes later the _Scylla_ is carrying him back up into the sky.


	5. family tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sylvain and Felix work out a deal.

“50% increase to your room and board rate,” Sylvain says from the pilot’s seat, slouched low, legs wide. Trying to exude _I’m fine with everything that’s happening here_.

“What the fuck for,” snarls Felix Dirty-Hot Thomas Fraldarius, exuding _go to hell_.

Dedue stays by the cockpit door, arms crossed, and responds evenly, “For our continued discretion.”

“And emotional damages,” Sylvain says, just to be a shit.

Felix fumes. “That’s bullshit.”

“What, a Fraldarius like you can’t afford it?”

“I’m not in contact with my father,” Felix retorts. “Are you?”

Sylvain keeps the reaction off his face. He made the Gautier connection, huh. Sylvain fed Felix enough of the individual pieces: the crest blood, the hair, the history, the way he can’t stop looking back over his shoulder. 

He lets it go for now. “We won’t charge you retroactively, just for the rest of the ride to Derdriu. I think that’s more than fair.”

“ _Fair_ ,” Felix repeats. “I’m the one stuck on your ship, surrounded by your crew, traveling on your schedule—” 

“You knew the situation when you first came aboard,” Sylvain argues right back. “We can’t just stop doing our jobs ‘cause you have somewhere you need to be.”

“You’re wasting my time and prolonging your own risk.”

That’s fucking rich. “You dropped that risk on our doorstep. We get to decide how to handle it.”

Felix sits with that for a stormy second, then says, “I’ll pay double for the entire trip if you deliver me to Derdriu within the week.”

Sylvain exchanges a mutual glance with Dedue. Actually that’s not a bad counter-offer. 

Dedue speaks up again first: “Perhaps it’d be better if we continued this conversation later in the evening, after we’ve all had some time to clear our heads.”

Dedue’s attitude—calm but immovable—is perfectly calibrated to defuse Felix’s. Felix blows out a frustrated breath. He pins Sylvain with a final look, hot with prickly resentment, then mutters, “Fine.”

Dedue moves a single step aside to let Felix through the cockpit door. Felix’s boots echo heavily down the bridge. 

Sylvain sinks even lower in the pilot’s seat. It’d be great if this day could be over. 

“We could reprioritize, swing by Derdriu first, then meet up with this Ignatz guy afterwards,” he tells Dedue. “Leonie won’t be happy, but it’d only be our first strike with her.”

“We wouldn’t need to make port directly on Derdriu,” Dedue says. “We’d only need to be within range to put our new friend on the passenger shuttle.”

The cheerless way Dedue says “new friend” makes Sylvain huff out a sour laugh. “We’d never see the shuttle again.”

“That wouldn’t be the worst possible outcome,” Dedue says, and he’s right.

“We’d have to rig a scuttling mechanism,” Sylvain says after some thought. “If he gets arrested flying our property, there’s no way that doesn’t blow back onto us.”

“I’ll ask Annette,” Dedue says.

Sylvain hates the idea of getting Annette involved, but there’s no way around it. Every passing day is an opportunity to get tagged by any of the two-thirds of the galaxy that wants Felix dead or captured and wouldn’t care if the _Scylla_ ’s crew ended up dead or captured alongside him. 

The first day Sylvain saw her in that shipyard was like trekking barefoot through the desert and reaching a cliff. You weren’t out of the wilderness yet, and the oppressive sun was still beating down on you, but finally you saw the path. That beyond the dry emptiness, on the other side of the red canyon, there was something green. You could see where to go. You could see how to get out. That was the _Scylla_. Five years she kept him flying even when his own heart hadn’t been up for the job. He isn’t about to let anyone take her from him now.

-

The new girl’s name is Fleche. She’s from Adrestia but hasn’t been back in a few years. When Thales entered the final stage of his rise to power throughout the sector, and all the backstage conspiring and puppetry transitioned into frontstage terrorism and intimidation, Fleche’s mother had the foresight to take her and get the hell out of dodge. Her father was already in the ground, but her older brother stayed behind to join the resistance effort. Now that her mother has passed away too—bad heart, Fleche says—she figures she may as well do the same. 

She ticks every box in Ashe’s predictable bleeding heart: scrappy orphan, little sibling.

Then again, Sylvain’s boxes are apparently “abrasive” and “dangerous” and “feline,” so he really can’t talk. 

After dinner, Mercedes brews a pot of tea. She’s telling Fleche about how she was born in Adrestia too, originally. They’re seated at the cleared table, and Mercedes speaks in a soft voice. She knows the status quo before Thales was rigidly hierarchical, prone to corruption, but it hadn’t felt quite this cruel or hopeless.

Fleche tells her that Thales’ position isn’t as secure as it looks. The former princess is leading the insurgency on Enbarr. Her brother says she’s a strong commander.

“It must be difficult, being separated from him for so long,” Mercedes says.

“I miss him all the time,” Fleche says. “But he believes in what he’s doing, and I do too.”

The common area has a small nook branching off its southeast corner, populated by mismatched cozy chairs and sofas. Sylvain sits there half-listening to the conversation, mostly watching the daily Leicester airwaves. The roundtable is in session blah blah blah. Goneril proposes foreign aid to rebel forces in Faerghus; Gloucester is opposed; Riegan plays both sides; yadda yadda. 

Ashe finishes up dish-washing duty and comes by with a mug of tea. “Where’s Thomas?” he asks. “He wasn’t hungry?”

“Guess not,” Sylvain says, and, “Thanks,” as he accepts the mug.

“Should I go bring him something to eat?”

“I think he probably wants to be left alone.”

“Right,” Ashe says, sitting too. 

He sounds disappointed, so Sylvain pulls him closer. Ashe grew up in a different home environment from Sylvain’s: more easy affection. He likes a good platonic cuddle. They watch the airwaves together. 

From the beginning Felix was never going to be a permanent fixture. It was stupid to allow himself to think otherwise. To extrapolate something long-term from Felix’s willingness to let Ashe smile at him and make small talk. The sprouting warmth he’d begun to show Annette, or how he’d looked back at Sylvain. How they’d looked at each other.

It’s not a big deal. The ten million bounty is definitely the bigger deal. 

Dedue and Annette return from the direction of the bridge. Annette is gnawing on her bottom lip. Sylvain glances at her from above Ashe’s silvery hair. She jerks her head in a quick nod, she’ll take care of it, so Sylvain’s eyes drift back towards the footage of people dying far away. 

-

It’s easy to forget that it’d taken Annette some time to truly warm up to Sylvain, back when it was him and her and Ashe, sketching out the shape of the life they wanted to make for themselves. For all her buoyancy, Annette was also driven and industrious, and she took it personally whenever she thought you didn’t hold yourself to the same standards as her.

Then, several months after they started flying together, they were refueling on Garreg Mach and she thought she saw her dad.

The man—stern, redheaded, built like a house—was only a merchant. Annette recovered swiftly, let go of his arm and said, “I’m so sorry!” but Sylvain saw her face. 

That evening she told Sylvain all about it. She knew it was ridiculous to be searching for him, a man who could have returned at any point but had chosen not to, so what good was it to force a reunion? She didn’t even know what she’d say if she ever did see him again. Did she want to punish him? Did she want confirmation that he felt guilty for his abandonment, that he hadn’t forgotten her this whole time, that there was some deep and profound reason that could absolve his neglect? More than anything she just wanted him to see her. She wanted him to understand how she felt. And she wanted to understand him too, to find some kind of compassion for him that she could transform into compassion for herself.

Halfway through, Annette started crying. Sylvain rubbed her shoulder and said, “Let it out. Yeah, that’s the good stuff,” which made her hiccup a laugh. She was glowing with teary catharsis. 

Later he told her, “You don’t have anything to prove to anyone. You’re already one of the best people I know.”

She hugged him tightly before they went to their separate quarters.

In the middle of the night she came to him again. She crawled up his bed with her blue eyes shining through the gloom and said, “Will you be my family now?”

“Yes,” Sylvain agreed, sitting up. He reached forward to stroke her red hair. His hand trailed down her ear, her neck, before it squeezed around the front of her throat like she was a small gasping bird.

He woke up panicked, the pressure and terror inside his chest crushing and incomprehensible.

It isn’t just Annette. Sylvain has watched Mercedes die in a dozen different ways. He’s killed Ashe himself. In his dreams they get what Sylvain’s family has always gotten from him: acres of violence and misery.

-

When he opens his eyes, he’s still curled up in the common area nook. Ashe is gone. It’s dimly lit and quiet. His head feels cottony. He shouldn’t have fallen asleep, but maybe his body needed it, to knock the fuck out for a blissful hour of nothingness.

Felix is sitting cross-legged in the neighboring chair, watching the same airwaves: Leicester politics, Claude von Riegan’s chess-playing. The tablet screen casts a blue, otherworldly glow across Felix’s face. He notices Sylvain regaining consciousness, and turns it off.

Sylvain says the first thing he can think of. “We missed you at dinner.”

“Can we talk?” Felix says.

He sounds like he’s cooled off some. Sylvain wonders how much it costs Felix to strip off that surface layer of aggression. 

Sylvain himself is experiencing the effects of sleep, of nighttime. Time feels elongated. Conversation feels easier under the cover of darkness. “Sure,” he says. “Let’s talk.”

“How did you find out about me?” Felix asks, after a moment.

“Our employer let me sneak a peek at your bulletin,” Sylvain says, stretching. His joints crack audibly. “Ten million, that’s impressive. What’d you steal?”

“That’s none of your business,” Felix says.

“I thought we were talking,” Sylvain says. He adds, “You’re an armed stranger sleeping a foot away from me every night. That counts as my business.” 

“If I wanted to hurt you, I could’ve done it by now.” 

“You had a knife on me just a few hours ago,” Sylvain points out.

“You used a name I hadn’t given you,” Felix says, steely.

“You think I’m going to turn around and sell you out?” Sylvain catches the look on Felix’s face and realizes, “Shit, you do.” 

“I don’t know you,” Felix says. He matches Sylvain’s low tone, like any louder and they’ll draw unwanted attention and then tomorrow’s daylight will catch up to them. “I don’t know what kind of person you are.”

Sylvain leans forward, elbows on his knees, and says this as sincerely as he can, “I don’t care about the ten million. I’m only looking after my crew and my ship. I’m not trying to fuck you over, Felix.” 

Felix searches Sylvain’s expression. He finds something that makes him drop another inch of his guard. 

Then he says, “You’re the Gautier who ran from the Sreng battlefront.”

This part was inevitable.

Sylvain’s instinct is to give Felix a bland smile, but his instincts haven’t been that great lately, so he doesn’t. And a piece of him, the busted up and buried one, says it’ll feel good to say it. Felix ran too. Felix will be gone in a few days. There’s no one better to tell. 

Felix’s version is the version Ingrid knows too, the one where Sylvain’s a coward. He _is_ a coward, just not in the way that story goes. 

So Sylvain sits back again and says:

His brother left home first. He started dealing arms to anyone who’d make their family’s life harder. He was on a personal mission to drag the Gautier name and reputation through the mud. Their old man preferred to keep these sorts of affairs within the family, so Sylvain was pulled back from the front to handle it, privately and efficiently.

Did Felix know the Agarthans were experimenting with synthetic crests? That’s what Miklan had gotten himself involved in. Sylvain had never seen or heard or smelled anything like it before. The equipment everywhere. The gruesome stinking blood.

Miklan’s eyes were red. He was all mass and sinew. He’d already been huge before, ever since Sylvain was a kid, but that day his muscles strained under his skin. His veins oozed black. He’d let them transform him into a monster, but underneath it all he was still the man Sylvain knew. He’d simply turned himself inside-out, and made his rage and spite and petty viciousness visible to the rest of the world too. 

“You killed your own brother,” Felix says, harsh and unsettled.

“I killed a lot of men,” Sylvain says. “By the time I killed Miklan I was… I mean, you know how it is, right? You see a lot of shit and you get used to it.”

It’s easy to have the wrong idea about war. It isn’t really about the bodies, or the sound they make, or even the smell. Doctors deal in bodies all the time. It’s how you feel about yourself afterwards. It’s whether you’re able to feel anything about yourself at all.

Sylvain stares up at the _Scylla_ ’s metal plated ceiling, painted a sky blue, and continues: “When I landed on Conand I kept thinking to myself, I don’t know if I can do this. I even thought—I was ready for it to go the other way. I thought that’d be the better outcome.”

Felix reacts to that. Some kind of soft, agitated noise.

“Obviously I got the job done anyway,” Sylvain says. He looks back down at Felix. “So that’s the kind of person I am.”

He just scooped out his guts and arranged them prettily across the floor in front of Felix. Felix can choose what he wants to do with the information. 

Felix is silent for a while, deciding for himself. His gaze is assessing.

“That’s why you left?” 

“I hitched my way from Conand to GM and traded money for the _Scylla_ a week later.” There’s a rawness in Sylvain’s throat. “Don’t tell me you think the fact that I bailed counts for more than the fratricide.”

Felix looks him in the eye. “It counts for something,” he says.

-

There are multiple ways to tell a creation story.

Felix Fraldarius is born on the cusp of winter becoming spring. He’s three weeks early and spends nine days in the neonatal intensive care unit, unable to stay warm without the help of an incubator. Without his crest, he would’ve died. For nine days Rodrigue stands outside looking through the glass, preparing for the possibility that he will lose his son. Struggling to accept the idea and make meaning from it. 

“You were so eager to meet us,” his mother teases once Felix is older, as if she hadn’t spent that time devastated by her own failure, unable to hold her newborn child. “You couldn't wait another day.” 

It’s as if Felix already knew how little time he’d have with her. 

Felix Fraldarius is born with a father, a mother, and an older brother, and by the time he turns eighteen he’s down two for three. The cat runs away too. Go figure. 

Glenn’s death changes who Glenn was. Everyone forgets that he had a hellish temper. That he was charming and quick-witted so he got away with being difficult and rude. He loved Felix but occasionally lost patience with Felix’s sensitivity. He taught Felix to ride a bike, then had to bike them both home after Felix broke his arm and kept crying and crying. He took responsibility, unfailingly. He believed in fairness alongside strength. He was the person who made Felix laugh the most. 

His dog tags arrive home from Duscur. Rodrigue accepts this and makes meaning. Felix accepts nothing. 

Felix Fraldarius is born on a moon that bears his family’s name. On his first birthday, he is brought before a silver tray, where a row of objects have been arranged to tell his future. Like all Fraldariuses before him, Felix goes for the sword. 

For their role in the war for Faerghan independence, Felix’s ancestors are rewarded a cosmic tether to the royal crown. Fraldarius follows the throne along an elliptical path. Rodrigue follows the king to Sreng and ignites a bloody border conflict in the name of territorial expansion. Glenn follows the king and queen and prince into the fires of Duscur where nobody comes back out, not the prince, not the planet Duscur itself. Then Cornelia takes from them even the prince’s burnt husk, and Rodrigue follows a dead family into that war too. 

Faerghus is determined that Felix should die in its name, but not before he loses everything first. Well fuck them. Felix imagines that’s what he was screaming, from the moment he was born, red-faced, small, barely breathing: _fuck that_. There’s another way through, a forward instead of circular path, even if Felix has to carve the fucking road himself.

-

“What I mean,” Felix tells Sylvain slowly, “is that I understand wanting to survive.”

It’s amazing that Felix has made it this far on subterfuge. He’s given Sylvain false names, ambiguous intentions, but the whole time he’s been shit at hiding his emotions. They leak out in his nonverbals. The flex of his jaw. The glossiness in his eyes. 

The atmosphere is so thick Sylvain can’t believe either of them are still breathing. He feels hollowed out of all of his dark and tender parts. That empty space fills with something dangerously similar to relief. 

“I need a drink,” Sylvain says. He clears his throat. “Do you want a drink?”

“Yes,” Felix says, getting up instantly.

They migrate to the galley. Sylvain grabs two glasses and the first bottle he finds. Some sort of flavored liquor that belongs to Ashe. He’ll forgive them.

Felix shoots the whole thing back, makes a face. “Too sweet.”

Sylvain grins, an honest little thing. “You don’t like,” he checks the label, “fluffed marshmallow? Aw, Ashe.”

Felix pours himself a second round anyway. 

They stand next to each other drinking in charged silence. Sylvain doesn’t know what else to say to Felix, after all that gory self-disclosure. The only words his brain can string together are: what if—and hear me out—what if you didn’t go?

“Listen,” Sylvain says instead, “Dedue and I talked it over. The _Scylla_ ’s got a passenger shuttle. We’ll be within spitting distance from Derdriu in a couple days. Once we’re close enough, you can fly the shuttle the rest of the way. Annette’s fixing it up for you.”

“You won’t get the shuttle back,” Felix says.

“You know, that problem crossed my mind too.”

Felix actually, stunningly, smiles. It’s brief and small. “Sorry.”

“I let you onboard,” Sylvain says. “Should’ve known better. You don’t look like a Thomas, anyway.”

Felix tilts his head and asks, “What do I look like?”

“Goddess,” Sylvain says, with a low laugh. “What do you think?”

In response, Felix sets his glass down and angles himself towards Sylvain. Challenging, like he knows he’s about to be kissed. Liquid fire rushes through Sylvain’s body. 

His eyes glide over Felix’s face, his lips. He can see the way Felix’s chest rises and falls in the shadowy light with every breath. Felix’s throat bobs. 

Sylvain swallows too. He says, weak, magnetized: “I swear this isn’t some kind of sleazy playbook, where first I tell you all that sad shit about myself and then get drunk and make a move—”

“Stop talking,” Felix says. He’s closer than he was a second ago. He’s leaning in too. 

The first kiss, their mouths barely touch. They’re sharing air more than anything else. Testing out the feeling. Sylvain kisses more deeply on the next one. He gets a better taste of Felix’s hot open mouth, and then not a minute later Felix has him pushed up against the cupboards.

Of course this is how Felix kisses. There was no other way for this to go but forceful pressure and heat. A rough noise that vibrates against Sylvain’s tongue. 

Sylvain can’t catch his breath. Felix is a whole lot of compact muscle and bottled appetite pressed up against him. He gets his hands in the game, tangling them in Felix’s hair—Felix likes that—and then grabbing the back of Felix’s thighs, hitching his legs up—fuck, he really likes that. 

The familiar sound of a cocked gun makes him freeze. Sylvain’s blood runs from hot to cold.

“Please tell me that was you,” he murmurs against Felix’s mouth. 

Felix’s voice has an appealing new husky quality, but it’s also suddenly mistrustful and alert. “It wasn’t me.”

They both look over.

“It was me,” says Fleche, her gun pointed straight at Felix’s head. “Hi,” she continues. “Where’s the freezer?”


	6. on ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sylvain confronts Fleche, Felix, and a freezer.

You must be fucking joking.

Felix’s attention doesn’t leave Fleche, even as he climbs off of Sylvain. His feet slowly touch the ground again. Sylvain’s hands stay on Felix’s ass for a second longer. Gotta avoid making any sudden movements, right?

“Well this is embarrassing,” Sylvain says. “Are you even an orphan?”

“My mom’s heart is so healthy she could outrun a horse,” Fleche says. “Where’s the freezer, Fraldarius?”

“Fuck you,” Felix says coldly.

“It’s in the passenger dorms,” Sylvain says.

Felix shoots Sylvain a look of angry disbelief. The fun making-out portion of the evening sure ended fast.

Fleche tosses two sets of zip-tie handcuffs across the floor. “If you could restrain him for me, captain.”

Her gun stays on Felix as her eyes follow Sylvain lowering himself to collect the first zip-tie. Plastic—means she’s either sloppy or under-resourced. She seems at ease with a weapon but not with being outnumbered. Must’ve thought she was going to find Felix alone.

It’s best to play it safe for now. Get a clearer read on the situation. Nobody needs to get twitchy yet.

“Sorry,” he says to Felix, who’s lit up with fury and shame. 

He loops the zip-tie around Felix’s right wrist first. The plastic teeth slide into place. He pulls until the cuff’s secure. Left wrist comes next. Felix doesn’t make the process easy, standing there unhelpful and resistant, seething in Fleche’s general direction fifteen feet away. Too far to rush at her without getting shot. 

Fleche motions with her gun. “Yourself too.” 

Sylvain plays like this part isn’t easy either. He locks himself into the second pair, then brings both hands up towards Felix with a look like _help a guy out?_

Felix’s expression is mutinous. He ducks his head down anyway. He captures one end of the zip-tie between his teeth and uses his mouth to tug the plastic tighter around Sylvain’s wrists. 

Felix’s breath is hot, controlled. His left cheek is turned away from Fleche. Sylvain strokes at it with a knuckle. Trust me one more time. 

Felix’s eyes flicker up to Sylvain. A moment passes between them. 

“Okay,” Fleche says, “now I want you both to come slowly towards me. Fraldarius, hands on your head where I can see them. Captain, hold onto his shoulder.”

This time Felix is five percent better at following directions. He steps forward. Sylvain does too.

It obviously stresses Fleche out, being approached by two men twice her size (which is being pretty generous to Felix, who’s more like one and a half). Sylvain is more and more confident in his initial assessment: she’s tough but she’s green. He can work with that. Felix is on the same wavelength. His shoulder muscles are taut. Sooner or later Fleche’s nerves will kill her focus, and when that happens Sylvain’s timing is going to have to match Felix’s perfectly—

—and without any warning Fleche whips the butt of her gun across the side of Felix’s head.

Then she does it again.

Sylvain spits out a _fuck_ and keeps a grip on Felix as he staggers back wordlessly against Sylvain’s chest. 

Felix doesn’t lose consciousness. His eyelids flutter, dazed. His pupils are dilated. 

So much for Fleche being outnumbered.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Sylvain says, trying to support Felix’s balance with his hands still cuffed. He feels the first vivid twinge of alarm.

“Agree to disagree,” Fleche says.

-

The _Scylla_ flies on, steadfast. The hour is late. The crew’s asleep and if Sylvain’s lucky they’ll stay that way. Fleche directs them down the portside corridor. They pass by Dedue’s quarters, but there’s a good chance he’s on the starboard side with Mercedes tonight. 

Felix is disoriented on his feet. He’s hurt and trying really hard not to appear that way. There’s blood in his hair, oozing down his temple. He sways against Sylvain’s chest as they walk. Fleche’s gun is trained on Sylvain’s back. None of this leaves Sylvain with a lot of room to maneuver.

“So what’s your deal? Are the Agarthans recruiting out of grade school now?” he asks over his shoulder.

“Thales can rot in hell,” Fleche says. “I wasn’t lying about where I come from.”

“Freelancer, then.” 

He can picture it well enough: new kid on the block, trying to prove her worth to her guild. Her home planet has been embroiled in Thales’ machinations her entire life. Orphan or not, she must’ve grown up a witness to instability and bloodshed. Brother dealt with it by joining up with the Adrestian princess. Maybe Fleche is dealing with it by trying to buy her way to security. 

“I’d prefer to do this with a little less talking,” Fleche says. 

“Sorry,” Sylvain says, “just wondering. ‘Cause if it’s the ten mil you’re after, Fraldarius is loaded. I bet if you ask nicely, Felix here would pay twelve just for you to walk away.”

Fleche doesn’t take the bait. Her price is higher than Sylvain thought. “Save your breath, captain.”

“You got someone lined up with a better offer than that?”

“The bounty amount really undersells the value of your cargo.”

The fuck does that mean? 

Felix makes a low, distressed noise.

That draws Fleche’s interest. “He doesn’t know?”

“Know what?” Sylvain asks.

Felix grinds out, “Shut up.”

“You don’t know what it is you’re carrying,” Fleche says. 

Sylvain doesn’t say anything. This is starting to make him anxious and pissed off, and he can’t afford the emotion right now. They’ve arrived in front of Felix’s quarters. Sylvain is running out of time. 

Fleche keeps her distance and tells him, “Open the door.”

“Sure you don’t want to reconsider?” Sylvain says. “I’ve seen the size of this thing. Twelve million would be a lot easier to carry off the ship.”

Fleche aims her gun away from Sylvain’s head, back onto Felix’s. “Open the door, please.”

Sylvain grits his teeth. “Okay, I get it.”

He’s clumsy with the door, not even intentionally, it’s just hard to manage with both the restraints and the responsibility of keeping Felix upright. The head injury makes Felix sensitive to noise, and the _Scylla_ , for all her virtues, is a loud and rusty gal.

“Sylvain,” Felix hisses.

“Settle down, babe,” Sylvain says, which is a worrisome new reflex.

But Felix shifts against Sylvain. He lurches. “I’m going to—”

And then he’s folded over, vomiting.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Sylvain says again as Felix collapses to his hands and knees. Fleche hit Felix pretty hard, but Sylvain didn’t realize it was this bad. Felix has a crest; he should be able to handle a minor concussion.

Fleche is growing increasingly impatient. “Captain.”

“Just give him a second—”

Felix keeps retching. His body shakes with it. He shoots out a blind hand and grasps the back of Sylvain’s calf. Sylvain lets Felix hold on, reaching down so he can pet through Felix’s bloodied hair until the wave of nausea passes.

Felix’s hand slips further down Sylvain’s leg. He gets to the top of Sylvain’s boot and squeezes real fucking meaningfully.

Sylvain goes still, mid-stroke through Felix’s hair. Then he continues.

“Get him up, captain,” Fleche says. Here come the nerves. “Now.”

“C’mon, Felix,” Sylvain says. “You’re alright.”

Felix buckles when he tries to stand, so Sylvain crouches down to help. A familiar calm settles over him, like the surface of a lake, smoothing out over dark and violent waters.

“You’ll be alright,” he tells Felix again, and takes the Zoltan from Felix’s boot. 

Sylvain explodes into action. He hurls the knife and shoves Felix back down, out of the way. It’s possible Felix lands in his own vomit.

The knife slices Fleche’s shoulder. It’s not going to incapacitate her, but it does the job of throwing her off target. Her bullet grazes above Sylvain’s ear. That’s another familiar feeling, being slapped by hot metal. Sylvain’s hearing drops out into a dull echo. He’s right inside Fleche’s critical space before she can take better aim. 

The cuffs are a problem. He grabs the barrel of her gun with both hands and goes for brute strength over finesse. He twists the gun up, pushing back forcefully against her wrist.

Fleche drops the gun with a pained snarl, but she kicks it away too, skating it across the floor. Then she lashes out with her other fist. This girl knows how to fucking _hit_.

Sylvain rolls with the blow and slams his shoulder against her windpipe. Fleche goes down, wheezing.

Sylvain’s ears are ringing. His face throbs. He flexes his arms, pulling his hands away from each other. The plastic digs into his skin. Come on, come _on_ , where are you, you piece of shit.

His crest activates with a pulsing glow. The zip-tie snaps apart and leaves purple ringed bruises around both his wrists. 

Now get the knife—

Fleche’s leg sweeps out, sending the knife flying far down the corridor. 

Okay, nevermind, get the fucking gun!

Fleche reaches it a second before Sylvain. They grapple for it, down on the floor. Sylvain can pin Fleche easily beneath his bulk, but he isn’t out here trying to beat on teenage kids. Fleche doesn’t show the same moderation. She scratches and bites and knees him straight in the balls and, while Sylvain is reeling from the fucked-up agony shooting through his groin, she wins control of the gun and gets out from under him. 

There’s new movement in the corridor. Fleche reacts with the instincts of a rabid dog. Sylvain hears the shot, but doesn’t feel the bullet. 

“Captain?” says Annette. 

Her silhouette fills the mouth of the corridor. For a moment she just looks confused. Then the pain catches up to her and she makes a choked noise and sinks down. 

“Shit,” says Fleche. 

Sylvain uses the distraction to tackle Fleche back to the ground. 

He punches her in the head—twice in succession like she’d done to Felix. Hard enough that his knuckles bruise. Fleche goes blessedly limp.

Sylvain climbs off of her, panting and seeing red. He stumbles over to Annette.

There’s a bullet wound in Annette’s right thigh. Sylvain grabs the Zoltan off the floor and begins to cut a window into the fabric of her clothing. She’s wearing her coveralls. She was probably working late to get the shuttle ready. Like Sylvain had asked her to do. 

Someone just threw a boulder into the lake. Sylvain fights to keep himself in the present, to crawl out of his sinkhole of rage and blame. 

“Annie? You still with me?”

“H-hurts,” Annette gasps, eyes unfocused. “You’re bleeding.”

“Hey, don’t worry about me,” Sylvain says. His own breathing sounds far away. “I’ve got you, I’m right here.” He leans down hard on the wound to stem the bleeding, and Annette groans, high and panicked. 

Then he starts yelling for Mercedes. 

-

They come all at once, in a burst of motion racing through the ship. 

“We heard a gunshot.” That’s Dedue’s voice, thick with sleep that’s quickly wearing off, followed by Ashe’s gutted one: “ _Annette—_ ”

Mercedes says nothing, just immediately tears off the bottom of her chemise nightgown. She kneels beside Sylvain and starts to fashion a tourniquet above the gushing hole in Annette’s thigh. 

“Keep up that pressure,” she murmurs to Sylvain. “I need your belt. Did you see an exit wound?”

“No, it’s still in there,” Sylvain says, then calls out, “Can someone check on Felix?” 

“Who’s Felix?” Ashe says, overwhelmed.

“He’s Felix,” Dedue says as he retrieves the Zoltan from Sylvain and goes to cut Felix free from his restraints. 

“Ashe, run to the infirmary, prepare the bed,” Mercedes says. “Sylvain, help me carry her.”

“Felix is a cat’s name,” Annette slurs.

“Annie, sweetie, we’re going to move you now,” Mercedes says. “Are you ready?”

The infirmary is Mercedes’ domain. She puts on a new skin, steady and unsinkable. Ashe assists her: he takes orders well, and his hands won’t shake no matter how he’s feeling. It makes him a good pilot. Sylvain hangs back. They dope up Annette. She’s sweaty and pale.

“Sylvain,” Mercedes says, jolting him out of the haze. She’s pulling on a pair of surgical gloves, preparing for extraction. “Go clean yourself up. You’ve been injured too.”

“I’m fine,” Sylvain says.

“Sylvain,” Mercedes says. She has never called him captain. 

“I’m fine,” Sylvain repeats. “I need to—”

He doesn’t finish, he just gets out of there. 

When Sylvain returns to the wreckage in the corridor, Fleche is still out cold. Dedue has secured her with one of her own zip-ties. Now he’s helping Felix take sips from a glass of water.

The blood hasn’t stopped roaring in Sylvain’s ears. Thirty minutes ago he had Felix’s tongue down his throat. He _let_ this happen, on his ship, to his people—all for a pretty face? ‘Cause he got a little too eager to suck Felix’s cock? Got stupid enough to start classifying Felix as something of “his” too?

Felix mutters a thanks once the glass is empty. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve and leans heavy and exhausted against the wall. Wasn’t a great evening for him either.

“How is she?” Felix asks scratchily.

“Mercedes is working on stabilizing her.” Sylvain tears his eyes away from Felix and finds Dedue instead. “I want to see what’s inside that freezer.”

Dedue’s mouth is set in a firm line. He nods grimly.

“No,” Felix says, pushing himself off the wall. “Sylvain, wait.”

“My mechanic was just shot,” Sylvain says. There’s ice in his voice. “I’d like to know what the fuck this was all for.”

Dedue is already stepping inside Felix’s quarters. When Felix tries to follow and stop him, Sylvain intercepts Felix in the open doorway, pulling Felix back against his chest. 

“Let _go_ of me,” Felix growls, but he’s not at full strength, he’s not even at half. “Don’t do this.”

He struggles more than he did when he had a gun to his head or when he was puking up stomach acid all over the _Scylla_ ’s floor. Sylvain holds on like a vice as they both watch Dedue approach the freezer stored by the foot of Felix’s bunk. 

It’s at least four feet across. The height of it comes up nearly to the top of Dedue’s thighs, and Dedue’s a big guy.

Dedue undoes the latches. When they click and pop open, the freezer releases a hiss and a cloud of cold, decompressing air.

“Be careful,” Felix says desperately. “Don’t—”

Dedue lifts up the door. He takes a step backwards.

“Captain,” he says, his tone strange.

The temperature inside the room feels like it’s dropped by a couple degrees. Sylvain lets go of Felix and joins Dedue in front of the freezer.

It takes him a few seconds to understand what he’s seeing. When he finally does, his brain fills with a sort of static. 

He turns around to look at Felix, the expression on Felix’s face, betrayed and peeled open and completely exposed. Then he looks back inside, down at the cryogenically frozen body of Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, crown prince of Faerghus. 

“You must be _fucking_ joking,” Sylvain says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the one where I straight up plagiarize the firefly pilot almost beat-for-beat, so thanks joss, I owe you one. and thanks so so much for reading!


	7. riegan’s gambit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ballad of Felix Fraldarius.

The Locket is a giant space station floating at the galaxy rim of the Leicester sector: a strategic command post, monitoring border relations with Almyra. Responsibility falls to Leicester to keep the station operational, but its construction took the mutual cooperation of all three sectors of Fódlan. Regular defense summits are held to discuss intragalactic security. 

Three years after Cornelia executed Faerghus’s crown prince, the summit rolled around again. Leicester, as usual, sent a Goneril to lead its delegation. Adrestia, now ruled by Thales, sent a lapdog in Duke Aegir. Faerghus was split in two: Cornelia saw no reason to attend, and Rodrigue was commanding a rebellion, so he sent Felix instead.

Which was how Felix found himself in a private unscheduled meeting with Hilda Goneril. 

Outside the Locket laid a field of stars. Goneril, the nearest planet, emitted an orange-blue airglow. In the glass, Hilda’s reflection rested her cheek against her palm as she flipped to the next page of Fraldarius’s bid for foreign aid. She was like her reputation said: silly and spoiled. Felix’d expected to deal with Holst instead, but it was possible Hilda had similar expectations about Felix too. They both belonged to the same club of second-borns. 

“All these numbers are making my head swim,” Hilda said, flipping again.

Felix turned away from the viewing window, back to Hilda across the conference table. “Just get on with it. Either we have your support or we don’t.”

“I hate having to reject people,” Hilda sighed. “Holst really does admire your dad.”

“I’ll pass along the message,” Felix said. 

“It’s not like we’re totally unsympathetic. But if we stand with you, we’re opening ourselves up to attack too, and right now our sector is dealing with its own problems.”

“This _is_ your problem. Almyra hasn’t been a proper threat in years, and it isn’t Leicester’s only neighbor.”

Hilda twisted the end of her ponytail around a finger. “That’s true! And being your neighbor, we’ve had front row seats to Sreng, and Duscur, and that time you guys came in and annexed _us_ —who wants to get mixed up in all that?”

“I don’t need you to educate me on Faerghus’s failings,” Felix said, impatience rising. “Get this through your head: whatever your feelings are about Faerghus, Cornelia won’t be satisfied and stop there. The Agarthans will come for Leicester next. Are you honestly going to sit there and claim neutrality between a tyrant and—”

“And who?” Hilda prompted. “Your dad? Rhea and a centralized Church power? It’s not like there are any more mini-Blaiddyds running around.”

She said _Blaiddyd_ and Felix felt thunder in his chest, like call-and-response instinct.

“Excuse me,” Felix said through his teeth.

Hilda leaned forward instead of shrinking back. “You’re asking us to commit Leicester lives and resources to a Faerghan conflict that doesn’t have a clear end-state. You get how that’s a hard thing to sell to the rest of the roundtable, right?”

“There are other ways to rule besides imposing the will of a single bloodline. The roundtable should know that better than anyone.” Dimitri’d known that too. Talked all the time about participatory governance, before—fuck, whatever. Felix took a breath. “Faerghus has to find a new future for itself once this is all over. But that future can’t lie with Cornelia.”

Hilda’s expression grew thoughtful.

“I wasn’t trying to be rude,” she said. “I know you and the prince were good friends.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Felix said, and because it’d been three years, he’d trained his voice to stay level.

Yet something about his reaction was making Hilda’s eyes glitter. “You don’t think so? Everyone tells me I’ve got all the good gossip.”

Felix opened his mouth to say something incendiary. He closed it without saying anything. 

The decision to send Hilda in place of Holst was unfathomable. Felix had just watched her touch up the paint on her nails in the middle of a keynote address by the Locket’s director of defense. She wasn’t a political animal. Felix wasn’t either, but Rodrigue’d been out of better options. Leicester had plenty of options besides Hilda Goneril.

Felix’s skin prickled. He’d misunderstood the rules of this engagement. Hilda was looking at him like he was her conspirator instead of her opponent. 

“What have you heard?” Felix asked slowly instead. 

“ _I_ heard,” Hilda said, “that you never got to see a body.”

-

Later that evening, when he’d returned to his guestroom, Felix received two transmissions.

The first was an audio file. The recording quality was crisp and clear. A man’s voice said, “Subject Alpha, day six of the exsanguination tests.” 

Felix sat on the edge of his bed and kept listening. Ice spread from the center of his chest, into every one of his limbs.

For a minute there was nothing but overlapping layers of machinery. Foreign whirs and hums that Felix couldn’t pull apart or source. One sound stood out: a faint, rhythmic pulse. 

A new voice was introduced, male and deep. This second man let out a nonverbal grunt. No pain yet, just the acknowledgment that pain was coming. Something was dampening the noise—a gag, or a muzzle. 

Over the next few minutes, the man’s breathing became louder and more heavy and wet. His voice cracked on a low whimper.

The pulsing grew intense. There was a burst of violent thumps: the man’s restraints. 

Then came a hoarse, agonized cry.

Felix hit stop. He lurched up to his feet. He went into the adjoining bathroom, where he braced himself over the sink and breathed in quick and shallow gasps.

He felt like he’d been dunked into an ice bath. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. He spent a minute dry heaving into the basin. He gripped the countertop edge firmly so his hands would stop shaking. 

He knew that voice.

He knew that fucking voice.

He knew it the way a person knew the house they’d grown up in. You left, years passed, yet the second you stood in that doorway again it came crashing back onto you in an instant: the smell, all the secretive nooks, which windows let in the most light. They could burn the house down to ash and you’d still find that you were able to recreate the whole miserable thing from memory. 

Felix looked up blindly into the mirror. Everything was blurry. He couldn’t see shit. 

When he regained control over himself, Felix went back to the bed. The audio file had ten more minutes left. He started it up again, but once again his stomach revolted, so he threw the entire tablet at the wall instead. 

-

The last thing Felix ever said to Dimitri was, “Don’t melt out there.”

Duscur was a far warmer planet than Fhirdiad. Dimitri smiled at Felix in the full-length mirror as he adjusted his collar. The diplomatic uniforms were stuffy: buttoned high up the throat, a blue so dark it looked black, with gold embroidered cuffs and military-style epaulettes. Dimitri did look striking wearing it. 

Felix observed at a distance, from the sofa at the back of the dressing room, then looked back to his tablet. “My father wants to invite you to spend the spring equinox with us next month.” 

There’d still be snow on the ground, but Faerghans celebrated the official end of winter anyway, with sleigh rides and fistfight competitions.

“That sounds like fun,” Dimitri said, turning around. “I suppose I won’t succumb to heatstroke after all.”

Felix tried not to be too pleased. “I’ll see you when you come back, then.”

The royal family was escorted by a detachment of the royal guard. Glenn was there, gracefully poker-faced. Felix stood with his father on the tarmac and watched as their vessel went climbing further and further into the blue morning sky, until it disappeared from view.

Or maybe the last thing Felix ever said to Dimitri was, “I can’t fucking look at you right now.”

The king’s assassination pummeled Faerghus off its axis. Felix sat behind Dimitri at the state funeral. He stared at Dimitri’s bowed, golden head. Fire had singed his hair shorter. Up on the altar, a bishop of the Church of Seiros said: “The Goddess will deliver our song of retribution.” 

Brutalizing Duscur drained the sector’s finances. The regent Rufus was a neglectful motherfucker, a Blaiddyd that even Rodrigue couldn’t love. In the following years, border planets drowned in poverty and disorder and rebellion. Nobody ever declared war anymore; it was simply inherited, from the actions of one generation to the next. 

The wind was barbarically cold on Gideon. Felix didn’t notice it until the fighting was over and someone else’s blood was cooling on his face. It was an asymmetric battlefield. The airstrikes alone had devastated the insurgent forces. Faerghus troops on the ground were left to examine the dead bodies. Felix found Dimitri in a slush of pink snow and mud. Dimitri was on top of a Gideon rebel, beating him with his fists. 

The man’s face was a swollen mass of fractured bone and teeth and still Dimitri kept going. The sound was as steady as a foot march. The man’s body twitched as he died. Dimitri was breathing harshly, but otherwise silent. 

So maybe what Felix meant to say was: you would have hated this for yourself too. Who am I looking at anymore? Where did you go?

Is that why he hadn’t known that Dimitri wasn’t truly dead? Why he’d accepted the lie so easily, without setting a match to the entire galaxy? He’d mourned Dimitri so many times already. By the time Dimitri died alone on Fhirdiad, Felix had already built a space for the loss inside himself. When he was younger, after his mother passed, he’d imagined that the size of grief must shrink over time, otherwise how could anyone keep walking around day after day, dragging it behind themselves? But that wasn’t right. He just grew strong enough to carry it. Then out of nowhere someone came along and cut off his hands. He’d been fooling himself this whole time, thinking there could be any finality, he could be done with this process of losing Dimitri. And that realization came with its own loss: how it wasn’t over, how his strength had been a falsehood, how he could have been such a fucking idiot to look away. 

-

The second transmission contained the number of a private frequency band.

Each word was scraped out raw from Felix’s throat: “Where is he?”

“Hey,” said Claude von Riegan, “slow down. Take a breath. I’m not your enemy.”

Claude’s face filled the tablet screen. The revelation barely knifed through the dense fog devouring Felix whole. Felix didn’t know whose face he’d expected to see. He didn’t care. It was dark in his room, and the walls were tight.

The summit would be over in another day. If it’s not out of your way, Claude told Felix, you should stop by Goneril for an extra day or two before flying back to Fraldarius. Tell your father that you’re making progress with the bid. Let Hilda show you around and introduce you to some new friends. 

-

There was an installation deep below the surface of the Fhirdiad capital. A massive crest research facility, running on its own power grid, consuming torrents of electricity.

The problem wasn’t getting inside. “I know a girl,” Claude said, then revised: “A woman. She hates ‘girl’.” She’d already weaseled into the internal networks. She’d installed her own backdoor, running sniffer programs to capture the layout, the guard rotations, the security codes. She had a level of personal investment in seeing labs like these burned to the ground.

The problem was getting back out. They had audio access, no visual. There was no telling what state Dimitri would be in. Best case scenario, he’d be lucid enough to hear directions and mobile enough to follow them, and even then Felix would need to find some decent weaponry on the inside. Worst case scenario, Felix would be fighting off building security unarmed with two hundred pounds of dead weight. 

So they had to give Cornelia a reason to move Dimitri out of the facility herself. 

For weeks Claude’s “tech support” terrorized the installation’s cyber-infrastructure. Obvious little pokes and disruptions to the power grid. It had to look like the hacking equivalent of a street mugging, not a targeted attack. The goal was to stoke Cornelia’s paranoia without making her feel threatened enough to start hunting for whoever was on the other end. 

Finally, intercepted communications three days before the summit revealed plans to “relocate the asset” as the lab reviewed its system security.

Two days before the summit, Holst came down with an alleged stomach bug.

“You should expect at least a five- or six-vehicle convoy,” Claude told Felix as he drew out the route, sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing a fluffy hotel robe. They were working out of Hilda’s private suite. The mattress was too soft, but Felix wasn’t sleeping lately anyway.

“It wouldn’t hurt to recruit some backup,” Claude continued. “Got anyone you trust?”

“There’s no one,” Felix said. There was no one left. “I’ll do it alone.”

“Ooh, what a tough guy,” Hilda said, dressed in a matching robe, leaning over Claude’s shoulder to get a better view of the holographic terrain map. 

The two of them were comfortable with each other. Felix recognized that in their body language. It slapped him across the face, seeing something so familiar from the outside. 

Claude’s penetrating expression smoothed out. “Suit yourself,” he said. He wouldn’t volunteer any of his own people for the job. An act of aggression on Faerghan soil would violate Leicester neutrality. 

“You crossed that line already,” Felix said later, out on the hotel balcony. 

Hilda had dozed off in a chair inside, half-obscured by the gauzy curtains. It was late evening now, and the temperature had dropped into a range that Felix was more accustomed to. He was far from home. That’d been true for some time.

“I smudged it a tiny bit,” Claude replied easily. He leaned backwards against the balustrade railing, brown hair moving in the breeze. 

“Why are you doing this?” Felix asked.

“I wasn’t actually looking for your prince when I first went snooping around,” Claude said, “but you heard the audio file too. It’d be pretty tough to let that go unanswered.”

“You’re saying you felt morally obligated,” Felix said, his tone flat.

“Is that so hard to believe?”

Felix gave Claude a narrow look. “I can tell when I’m being used.”

“Who’s using who?” Claude turned around to face the same direction as Felix. “Loosen up. I’m delivering your long lost prince gift-wrapped to you on a silver platter and I haven’t even asked you for anything in return yet.”

“ _Yet_ ,” Felix repeated.

Claude laughed. “You’re fun,” he said, which was something nobody had ever said to Felix before, and it made Felix feel annoyed and off-kilter. 

After a moment, Claude spoke up again. “If you want a domino to fall out there,” he tilted his head towards the horizon, “you have to start by knocking some stuff down over here.”

Felix gazed back out over the balcony where Claude was looking. The Locket was visible in the sky, small and flickering. Beyond that, the outer edge of their galaxy that shared a border with Almyra stretched like a shining flat disc.

“What’s out there?” Felix asked.

Claude shrugged and said, “What else? An end to all this warring.”

-

Five security escort vehicles, surrounding one armor-plated van. It was the middle of the night. Felix stood on a hilltop two hundred yards away and watched through his goggles as the convoy approached. 

Claude’s intel was solid. The rocket launcher he’d loaned Felix was pretty good too. Felix hoisted it over his shoulder. The first shot blew the leading vehicle onto its side. The second vehicle crashed straight into the wreck.

The explosion vibrated the ground beneath Felix’s feet. The road filled with smoke and fire, the sound of rolling and smashing metal. 

Felix used the second and third rounds to blast the vehicles at the rear, boxing them all in. Then he strapped the launcher onto his back and swapped it out for a carbine rifle as he stalked down the hill. 

He worked fast and slick in the darkness. The fire was hot through his tactical skinsuit. The scope of the world narrowed down. He saw someone emerge through the flames, he took aim, he killed them. He did it again and again. Sometimes they shot back. When Felix ran out of ammo he used his knife. 

Eventually the fire started dying too. In the center of the carnage, the backdoors of the armored van remained closed. 

Felix grabbed a gun off a dead body. He shot the lock off the doors. When the doors swung open, he finished off the four personnel inside too: each a clean bullet to the head. 

The road fell into eerie silence. 

Felix dragged the freezer out of the back of the van, onto the gravel. He popped it open with clumsy gloved fingers. 

Dimitri lay inside, curled up, golden hair long and unwashed. The state of frozen stasis had relaxed all of his facial muscles. Like this, he looked young. The skin surrounding his missing right eye was scarred. The rest of his naked body was a constellation of healing lacerations and burns. 

Felix reached a hand inside. Then he withdrew it swiftly and locked up the freezer again. 

“I have him,” he said aloud. “He’s in cryo.”

Claude’s voice crackled into his ear. “Clean up and get out of there.”

Felix loaded the freezer back into the van. He tossed out the corpses, then shut the doors and climbed into the driver’s seat.

He ripped off his goggles, blinking rapidly as his eyes readjusted to the low visibility. His arm was bleeding, though he didn’t feel it. He sat there and flexed his hands around the steering wheel. Something crawled up his throat. 

“Felix?” Claude again. “Why aren’t I listening to the comforting sounds of you escaping to safety?”

Where was _safe_? Felix thought of Dimitri on Gideon, blood streaked across his unrecognizable face. Dimitri on Fhirdiad, isolated and betrayed and imprisoned. Dimitri back on Fraldarius, reuniting with the Church, waking up and being asked to lead another war. 

The road ahead of him gleamed in the dark with broken glass and metal. 

“I’ll meet you on Derdriu,” Felix said, even as he knew that was exactly what Claude wanted. 

For five seconds it was quiet through the earpiece.

Then Claude said: “Get to Garreg Mach. I’ll ask around and hook you up with the name of a reliable passenger transport from there.”

Felix started up the van. The engine rumbled weakly, before roaring back to life. 

“You’d better be the real deal, von Riegan,” he said.

“You got your prince, didn’t you?” Claude said. “Have I disappointed you yet?”

“Yet,” Felix threw back, and Claude was laughing again.

The name he sent Felix a day later was _Scylla_.


	8. becalmed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew sets a course.

Sylvain is up until the early morning on his hands and knees, scrubbing Annette’s blood out of the floor. He’s so fucking exhausted he feels like he’s been drugged, but he’s learned by now that if you don’t clean up fast enough, the blood will rust the steel. 

It’s taking forever. Anytime he thinks he’s starting to see positive results, he finds out there’s more blood up ahead. The wet path crawls along the length of the corridor. It’s coming from inside Felix’s quarters, trickling slowly under the door. 

There’s a smell, too. Like the unwanted love child of a hospital and an industrial plant. It coats the inside of his mouth, sour and poisonous. Chemical funk and necrosis.

Lightning crackles in the distance when he opens the door. 

He wades forward. The blood’s leaking out from under the lid of the freezer, oozing down the enforced steel, puddling at the bottom. It soaks thick and endless through his boots. Something’s banging against the freezer door: _boom, boom, boom._

Sylvain knows what’s in there. The terror in his chest signals a homecoming. He pries the freezer open and looks inside anyway.

An arm shoots out and yanks Sylvain down into the chasm.

The booming gets louder. A mantra, in a voice straight out of someone’s childhood: _I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die._

Sylvain gasps for air. There isn’t any, just smoke. He clutches back frantically at that arm. If he lets go, he’s going to fall, and there’s something waiting for him in the hellfire. It’s so hot down here. Hadn’t it been cold, that day? The arm he’s gripping is shredding apart under his fingernails. The blood drips down onto his own face. He’s going to die. He doesn’t want to die. This is always when the realization hits him, is when he’s right on the edge of falling: he doesn’t want to die. 

And the same arm that he’s clawing at is clawing back at him, grabbing his ankle, dragging him inside. And the same face that’s below him is above him too. A long, jagged scar that cuts across red eyes and teeth.

Sylvain jerks awake in the bright light of the infirmary. His chest is pounding. His eyes water and burn. He draws in an uneven breath, then a second one. 

That fucking _sucked_. 

Mercedes’ empathetic face fills his vision. “Bad dream?”

Sylvain shakes his head, doesn’t answer. If he tries to talk right now, nothing good is going to come out.

Mercedes settles back against her chair. She’s sewing up the hole in the leg of Annette’s coveralls. The scrap of fabric that she’s using for the patch is a dainty floral print. Annette is gonna love that.

Sylvain’s attention floats back to the small frame on the infirmary bed: stable, sleeping. 

“She’ll be on crutches for a little while,” Mercedes tells him.

“What else?” Sylvain asks.

“The bullet missed bone, and the damage to her major muscle groups is minor,” Mercedes says. “She’s lucky.”

“Lucky” is one word for it. He watches Annette’s gently moving chest. Her placid face, drained of color. Her hair, which isn’t the right shade of red, but close enough. 

-

“On today’s agenda, we’ve got a precocious bounty hunter tied up in the cargo bay, a prince formerly presumed dead now found napping in a freezer, and the Faerghus’s Most Wanted who snuck him onboard.”

Sylvain leans against one of the tall medical supply cabinets and finishes: “So where do we start?”

Everyone is running on fumes. Dedue’s five o’clock shadow has made a strong comeback. He’s taken up the chair next to Mercedes, one hand resting on Mercedes’ knee. Any other day Sylvain would love to tease him about the outrageous PDA. 

“The girl poses the most immediate danger. She needs to be removed from the ship as quickly as possible.”

Ashe stays hovered back near the infirmary doors, eyes bloodshot and tender. He flinches when Dedue says “the girl.”

“That said,” Dedue continues, “I’d prefer not to resort to any permanent solutions.”

That’s a nice euphemism for not wanting to perform an execution.

“I’m with you there,” Sylvain says, “but I’m also not seeing an obvious alternative. If we stick with the plan, our next port is Gloucester. I don’t like the idea of Miss Junior League Assassin still hanging around when we land, but there’s nowhere to ditch her between here and there.”

Ashe finally glances away from Annette on the bed. “What plan?” he asks. “What happened to Derdriu?”

Sylvain and Dedue share a wordless five-second conversation: _Do you want to cop to it, or should I?_

Dedue jumps on the grenade before Sylvain can. “It was decided that we would all go our separate ways a few days sooner, and send Felix off in the passenger shuttle instead.”

A flurry of reactions: Ashe repeats, “It was decided?” while Mercedes looks sharply at Dedue and protests, “We can’t _jettison him off into space_.”

“You’re making it sound worse than it is,” Sylvain says. “He paid to get to Derdriu, we’re providing him with a way to get to Derdriu.”

“He’s being _hunted_ ,” Mercedes says, letting go of Dedue’s hand (uh oh) and turning to Sylvain next (ah shit), “and now, knowing what we know about who he’s protecting, this goes beyond the issue of payment. That shuttle has no defensive capability. He’s safer flying with us.”

“As far as I’m concerned, his safety is second to ours. I’m not jeopardizing any more of my crew.” 

“That’s just an excuse to act selfishly and scared,” Mercedes says. 

Woof. Sylvain can hear the breath that Ashe sucks in audibly through his teeth. 

And Mercedes isn’t done. “I’ve had to sew up each and every one of you in this same room a dozen times before. You chose a lifestyle that’s never guaranteed safety, Sylvain, and we chose it with you.”

Going toe-to-toe with Mercedes is as fun as being keelhauled across the bottom of a ship. Sylvain is sleep deprived enough to make an attempt at it anyway. 

“I don’t get it. Last week it was ‘Sylvain, stop getting hurt,’ ‘Sylvain, don’t be reckless,’ and now it’s ‘Sylvain, let’s join an intergalactic manhunt, we don’t get hurt nearly enough’—”

Mercedes interrupts, voice barely raised: “Don’t you think there’s a difference between taking risks to help others and taking risks to smuggle gems?”

“That cargo is what keeps us fueled up and flying,” Sylvain retorts.

“I know we’ve been lucky so far,” Mercedes says. “I know how hard you’ve worked to keep us on the fringes of all the ugliness and war.” She looks around the infirmary, into all of their faces. “But Prince Dimitri was lost and _we_ found him. Doesn’t that feel like a sign?”

Sylvain wants to scream. He scrubs his hand through his hair. “You’re killing me here, Mercie.”

Mercedes folds her hands into her lap. “We can’t keep our backs turned on the rest of the galaxy forever.”

If Sylvain had met Mercedes any way other than drugged to the gills with a hole in his own stomach, maybe he’d resent her for seeing him as clearly as she does. But he’s spilled his guts to her in more ways than one (hah). In combat your medic is also your priest, your confidant, your fucking saint. They know your blood type and your pain tolerance. They know what you dream about when you’re pathetic and feverish, calling out names in the dark.

In the stillness that follows, Ashe gathers himself up. You can see him practicing what he wants to say in his head.

“This is my fault, captain.”

“No,” Sylvain pushes himself upright off the cabinets, “hey, don’t go there.”

None of this falls on Ashe’s shoulders. After all, Sylvain’s in charge, and everyone just spent three weeks watching him pant after Felix’s attention like a dog. 

“I didn’t vet Fleche properly before inviting her onboard.” Ashe’s voice is effortfully steady. “I messed up, not Th—Felix.”

He looks to Mercedes, back to Sylvain. “I want her off the ship as much as anyone else. And if we escort Felix the whole way to Derdriu… that’d free up the shuttle for other purposes.”

Sylvain is losing this one, badly. Only one potential ally left standing. 

_Back me up?_ Sylvain projects hopefully in Dedue’s direction. 

Dedue is silent for a measured moment. Then he shakes his head almost imperceptibly: _The situation has changed, captain._

-

Transports like the _Scylla_ tend to have certain outdated features that make them attractive to folks in Sylvain’s line of work. The old-school paneling means plenty of secret compartments in the walls and floors to hide contraband. Her engine specs are unsophisticated but easy to modify, so Annette gave her a makeover and now the _Scylla_ leaves all her newer and sexier sisters eating her dust.

Instead of automatic sensors, her doors are manual. They can be locked individually from the outside. 

Felix is sitting on the floor, his back ramrod straight against the cot, one knee drawn up against his chest. His right arm stays curled over the top of the freezer. Perfect little guard dog. 

“How’s your head?” Sylvain asks.

According to Mercedes, who dropped by earlier to check on the concussion, Felix’s recovery speed is even better than Sylvain’s. The clarity is back in his eyes. There’s nothing to dilute Felix’s indignation. That’s convenient, ‘cause Sylvain is spoiling for a confrontation.

“Can I get you or His Highness anything? Some water? Another one of my crew members to use as cannon fodder?”

A muscle twitches in Felix’s jaw. He continues to say nothing.

“Gotta hand it to her, the girl’s left hook is killer,” Sylvain goes on. “And she’s what, a hundred pounds soaking wet? That has to be humiliating for you, getting your ass kicked by Baby’s First Bounty Hunter.”

“I wasn’t the only one,” Felix mutters.

“He speaks!” Sylvain says with fake astonishment.

Man, if looks could kill. “How much longer are you going to keep me locked in here?”

“Honestly, I haven’t decided yet. How much more trouble are you going to keep shoveling over my head?” 

“As if my entire goal is just to make your life more difficult,” Felix says scathingly. “You’re not the only person this is happening to.”

“Oh, shit, you’re right,” Sylvain says, “ _you_ got shot in the leg too! How did I miss that, let’s get Mercedes in here right away—”

“Are you always such a fucking prick?” Felix snarls. 

“Weirdly enough, I do have a hard time getting along with people who lie to me.”

“Get over yourself,” Felix says, standing up now. “I never lied—”

“You had three whole weeks where you could’ve told me the truth about your cargo, _Thomas_ —”

“—and why the hell should I have trusted you with that information anyway?” 

Sylvain smiles, buttery smooth. “I thought we had something special.” 

He takes a step closer and Felix tenses. Every fiber of careful belief woven between them got pulled apart the moment Sylvain forced open that freezer. 

Sylvain slips past Felix to sit on the cot’s edge. Taking up space, leaning back casually against his hands. “Actually, what I thought was that you were trying to find a way out of Faerghus, not haul it around with you everywhere you go.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Felix says, low.

Sylvain reaches over and pats the top of the freezer. “That’s literally what you’re doing, sweetheart.”

Felix’s expression is hot, every inch of him primed for a fight. The nearness of Felix’s body hooks right into Sylvain’s like a fishing line. It pummels Sylvain with whatever that emotion is when you’re pissed at someone and you want them on top of you at the same time. 

“This _is_ the way out,” Felix says. “I’m done fighting and dying under the Church’s patronage. We need an option for winning the rebellion that doesn’t involve endless proxy warfare.”

“And Claude von Riegan is that option for you?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you. Why do you care? You already gave up.”

Sylvain _doesn’t_ care. Whatever Claude is cooking up, Sylvain doesn’t give a shit. He’d just assumed Felix felt the same way. That they were both looking in the same direction, forward and not back, with the same understanding of how to build a life in this giant barbaric universe: find your own piece of sky and independence, fuck the rest. 

“Faerghus is like any relationship,” Sylvain admits. “No point in trying to make a bad one work.”

“You really are a coward,” Felix says contemptuously. 

“The truth sets you free, right? Baby, at least I’m honest with myself. If you wanna act like this is all about having a path and a purpose, go for it, but what I see is someone trying to wake up the last remaining person in his life so he won’t be left all alone again.”

Felix goes rigid as the hit lands. Eyes dark, cheekbones flushed. Sylvain can’t tell if he’s hurt by it, or stunned. Like it’s a fact he hadn’t yet named.

Either way, he snaps back into himself.

“Call me baby one more fucking time,” Felix sneers. “This space-wanderer bullshit doesn’t make you _free_. You’ve bought into your own con. Go run all the way to Brigid. You’ll never get away from yourself.”

Good to know Felix has a mean mouth whether they’re kissing or arguing.

Sylvain sat down as a sort of power move but now he’s regretting it, having to stare at an upward angle at Felix, broadcasting the physical blow all across his own face. 

He can’t defend himself. He has no idea what to say to that. Felix is focused on looking at Sylvain’s forehead instead of into his eyes. Too proud to pull a punch. Too soft to actually watch it make impact. 

Turns out this is what the other side of the coin looks like, after you’ve told someone about yourself. Marooned together in this small little room aboard a small little boat. Standing in the floodwaters of your knowledge of each other.

The intercom clicks on.

“Captain,” Ashe interrupts. “I need you on the bridge. We’re being hailed.”

-

Honest to Seiros, these past few days have featured the worst string of luck Sylvain has experienced ever since that one time his daddy told him to take a break from murdering the Srengi to go murder his big brother instead. 

“I thought we were flying under the radar,” Sylvain says as he follows the red blip on the radar screen. It’s a Leicester police cruiser, stalking behind the _Scylla_. 

Usually Ashe is a wizard at sneaking past the law. “We were,” he says, brows furrowed. “The feds never come out this far. Maybe Leicester increased their sector security?”

“Maybe,” Sylvain says, “but our buddy here is playing pretty fast and loose with the patrol routes.”

Leicester is technically neutral, but there’s no accounting for individual actors. Money is a powerful motivator. Just ask the girl hogtied in his cargo bay. 

Sylvain glances over his shoulder. “Think he’s looking for you?” he asks Felix. 

Felix, thankfully, has an outlook similar to Sylvain’s: the second a third party aims a gun at our heads, the two of us are calling a truce. 

“It’s safe to assume everybody’s looking for me,” Felix replies, hanging back and maintaining a prickly radius of personal space, but at least he’s capable of eye contact again.

The incoming message alert grows more and more insistent.

“What do you want me to do?” Ashe asks.

Sylvain ignores the pit in his stomach. The whole crew is nervous and on edge. This is the exact wrong time for him to be losing his cool.

“Try to sweet talk him,” Sylvain says. “I’m gonna need five minutes. Get ready to boost away at the first opportunity.”

He leads Felix back out of the cockpit. Behind them, he hears Ashe open the hailing frequency with a bright, “Hi, this is the _Scylla_ ’s pilot speaking—”

“So I know we were just blowing up at each other,” Sylvain says, as he and Felix head down the bridge, “but will you do me a favor and go to the infirmary and let everyone else know what’s going on?”

“Are we getting boarded?” Felix says. 

This doesn’t register right away, but in a few days Sylvain will be thinking about this first instinctive “we.”

“We’re not getting boarded,” he says for now. “But if we _do_ get boarded, there are crawlspaces throughout the ship. Take His Highness and hide. Don’t come out until it’s clear.”

At the end of the bridge, Felix pulls Sylvain back by the wrist, frowning. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again. Even the after-fight is its own kind of fight. His eyelashes catch the shine of the artificial ship lighting when he looks away and back again. 

He says gruffly, “Sorry about Annette.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain says. “Me too.”

Felix goes left. Sylvain goes right, towards the cargo bay to go jettison _someone_ off into space. 

-

Fleche observes suspiciously with her hands bound behind her back, her ankles tied to the seat, as Sylvain pre-programs coordinates into the passenger shuttle.

“It’s short-range, but there’s enough fuel to get you back to Sauin. Once you land, take a ferry to Enbarr, hitch to Bergliez, I don’t really care where you go. Try not to let the feds catch up to you.”

Fleche makes a muffled noise.

Sylvain considers it, then rips the tape from her mouth. She hisses through the pain, working her jaw open and shut in succession. 

“How am I supposed to pilot like this,” she says, punctuating it with a hard jerk against her ropes. 

“The controls are set to auto,” Sylvain says. “And you can wiggle out of that within the half hour. Fifteen minutes, if you’re good. Hey, I have a question for you.” 

“I have somewhere you can shove it,” Fleche says.

“That’s cute,” Sylvain says. “How’d you know where to find Felix?”

Fleche studies him coolly. “I found Fraldarius because I was looking for you.”

“Uh huh,” Sylvain says, uncomprehending. “What?”

“Somebody recognized you on Sauin,” Fleche says with a flash of vindictive and bratty gratification. “The guy wouldn’t stop talking about it. Gautier’s still offering a reward for your retrieval, so I scoped out your ship. Then I saw a bigger fish instead.”

Sylvain feels a little like the Goddess has descended heaven to personally backhand him across the cheek. 

Everything lurches. The _Scylla_ shakes violently from the force of impact. A loud and heavy tremor rocks through her foundations. She starts screaming, the collision alarm blaring throughout the main body of the ship. 

When he gets his balance back, Sylvain punches the intercom button above the shuttle’s control panel. “Ashe?”

“Sorry, captain,” Ashe grits out, staticky and strained. “I don’t think I was sweet enough.”

“How bad is it?”

“He hit an engine. If we’re going to boost, we need to do it ASAP before he fires on the second one.”

“Copy that,” Sylvain says. He releases the button, then bashes his fist against the panel.

Fuck! This is just not his fucking week!

The pain lancing through his knuckles actually helps. Sylvain breathes: three counts in, six counts out, just like Ingrid taught him. He turns back to Fleche, who’s watching him with a mix of trepidation and disdain.

Is Sylvain a bad person for using a teenage girl as a decoy? Probably. But she did try to kill him first. 

When the passenger shuttle deploys, there’s a palpable minute and a half where the police cruiser has to choose who to pursue. Does he assume it’s Felix aboard the shuttle trying to escape, and change course to follow? Or does he stay locked on to the _Scylla_ ’s trajectory? Sylvain and Ashe wait it out together in the cockpit. Sylvain hovers behind the pilot’s seat. Ashe keeps a grip on the throttle. Neither of them say anything to each other. 

Their radar warning stops chirping. The visual display blinks from red to green.

Target lock no longer detected.

Sylvain drops into the co-pilot seat out of sheer relief. 

Ashe exhales deeply. His posture goes completely slack for a quick moment, before he straightens up again: time to go.

“The engine readout looks pretty fucked up, captain,” Ashe says. The cursing comes out when he’s tired and stressed out. “I don’t think I can get us to Derdriu without repairs, and I can’t handle the repairs without Annette.”

“Can we at least limp the way to Gloucester?” Sylvain asks.

Ashe jerks his head in a nod. Guess they’re picking up some artwork first after all.

The _Scylla_ prepares to boost. When a ship flies this fast, it distorts the space around it. Everything warps together, the white starlight blurring into the inky blackness, the sky behind them blurring into the sky ahead. For the first time in a while this doesn’t look like salvation to Sylvain, it looks like a storm. 

-

Thanks to the cheap generic morphine, Sylvain doesn’t have the best memory of Remire. He knows that at some point it began raining buckets. The water cascaded outside the medic tent. He felt loopy whenever he was awake. His tongue felt stupid. Mercedes was above him, checking his temperature and his bandages.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” she said. “I have them too.”

 _Them,_ Sylvain rolled it over in confusion, then remembered, right, they were talking about nightmares.

“Who’s in yours?” he slurred.

“Nobody real,” Mercedes said. She had a nice voice. The kind of voice where she could tell you about some of the worst shit imaginable and still somehow make it sound like at the end of the day everything was going to be okay. She trailed off, or maybe Sylvain drifted out of consciousness again. “Although, sometimes I do dream about my stepfather.”

“Dad?” Sylvain said.

“Mmhm,” Mercedes said. “He hired me out to wealthier families in order to pay off his debts. I did domestic work, mostly.”

Sylvain wished his head was clearer. “Deserved better th’n that. Sorry.”

He reached for her, clumsy and earnest, and thought he saw her smile at him then. His abdomen hurt, in a distant way. The actual pain was over and he was just living in the memory of it now. There was a hand in his.

“It’s alright,” Mercedes said. “I don’t mind talking about it. Who’s in yours?”

The rain kept on going like the world was ending. Like everything outside was being cleansed in a holy flood and Sylvain was hidden away, out of reach.

“Dunno,” Sylvain said, eyelids drooping low. “I think it’s just me.”


	9. strays, redux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Repairs are made on Gloucester.

Each year _Fódlan Geographic_ , the premier travel guide for nomads and adventurers, determines the 10 Most Beautiful Places in the Galaxy. The usual suspects top the list: the pink and orange sandstone slot canyons of Varley. Edmund’s temperate forests, home to miles of giant thousand-year-old trees that stand like old gods over the mossy undergrowth. 

The annual honor of #1 is always awarded to Derdriu and its floating blue-green capital city. Except back in 1178, when Gloucester’s flower fields experienced a super-bloom so insane it could be seen from space. Stretches of vibrant color showed up on every satellite photograph, poppies and lupines and, of course, lavender. 

Gloucester took the crown that year. This fact remains something the entire planet is proud of. The same signage in every spaceport: “Welcome to the Planet of Perennial Bloom!”

More like perennial pretentiousness, but Sylvain gets the basic appeal. He wakes up in an actual bed next to actual windows with the sunlight streaming in. Mercedes is laughing downstairs as Dedue recounts the time he and his sister set off fireworks in the family garden. The begonias burnt up in an instant. Sister nearly lost her eyebrows. 

Mercedes turns her smile towards Sylvain when he comes down to the kitchen. “Good morning.”

“Morning.” Sylvain takes a seat on one of the bar stools. “How long have you both been up?” 

Dedue’s hair is plaited back neatly out of the way. There’s an apron tied around his waist. He’s frying up triangular puffs of dough. They smell sweet, spiced with cardamom. Annette’s appetite has been low since she woke up, her mood is low too, so Dedue is trying out a strategy where he cooks all of Annette’s favorites and accepts the risk that he’ll give her cavities in the process. 

“Not long,” he says as he lays the latest batch on a towel to drain and cool. “We thought we’d prepare breakfast as a thank you to our host.”

Sylvain reaches across the kitchen island to steal a puff. Mercedes slaps his wrist away, but too late. Those little fuckers are hot. 

“Ow.” Sylvain sucks his burnt fingertips pitifully into his mouth. “I knew you were still mad at me.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mercedes says. “You made the right decision. I’m proud of you.”

It’s dangerous for Sylvain to hear shit like that. You don’t leave food out for a feral cat. You can’t teach them the existence of that hideously gentle feeling of being fed. Having people to feed them. You’ll start giving them ideas about what kind of cat they are.

Dedue has some powdered sugar on his cheek. Mercedes dusts it off for him on her way over to the coffee pot. He turns his face so he can kiss her palm quickly without taking too much of his attention off the stovetop. 

Sylvain watches them and that feeling just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

“You know you two can jump ship at any point, right?” he says. “Settle down in a little cottage like this one. I wouldn’t hold it against you.” 

Mercedes spares him a glance.

“We know that,” she says. “Do you want cream in your coffee, honey?”

“No, thank you,” Dedue responds as he checks on the sausage sizzling in the pan.

“Sylvain?” Mercedes asks next.

“Sure,” Sylvain says after a moment. “Thanks,” as he reaches out to accept, and the conversation moves on. 

-

Their host returns while the coffee’s still hot, pedaling up to the front of the cottage with a crate of engine parts. 

Sylvain helps detach the crate from the back of Ignatz’s bike. It’s heavier than it looks; lugging it back here must’ve taken some strength. Ignatz’s family lives right in town, but the cottage is a good trek into the woodsy countryside. He comes out here to paint. Next to the main house is a garden shed that’s been repurposed into an art studio. Closest neighbors are a mile in opposite directions.

All in all, not a bad spot to lay low and regroup. See if it’s possible to go a single day without some kind of awful shit going wrong. 

“There’s breakfast inside if you’re hungry,” Sylvain says, lifting the crate into his arms. “Dedue’s an awesome cook.”

Ignatz follows behind with his bike. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Nah, we’re the ones imposing. If there’s anything else we can do to help out while we’re here, any leaky faucets, bad pipes, just say the word.”

“That’s really nice of you to offer,” Ignatz says, as if he’s not the one sheltering six outlaws in his guestroom.

The _Scylla_ is docked in the meadow behind the cottage, her landing gear lowered into the tall grass. A metal beast among the wildflowers. She made it here to Gloucester through the combined power of Ashe’s duct tape and Mercedes’ prayer. A pair of birds dart around her scarred left engine, singing noisily. 

Ignatz rests his bike against the back porch, but doesn’t head inside right away. “You have a beautiful ship,” he comments.

Sylvain hasn’t heard that one before. “Thrifty,” “antique,” and “flying rubbish,” sure. “You think so?”

“Definitely,” Ignatz says animatedly. “I pass by an old wind farm on my bike route. It’s a bit of a boneyard, but when the sunset hits the turbines just right, everything glows. Your ship reminds me of that. She has a lot of character.” 

“Okay,” Sylvain says, “first you give us room and board, then you do our shopping for us, now you’re sweet on my ship—”

Ignatz’s eyes widen. “No, I wasn’t—”

“—you gotta let me pay you back. Leonie’s going to kill me if I don’t. Are you sure there aren’t any house chores you need to get done? Put me to work. Anything you need.”

“Oh no,” Ignatz says, redder and redder, “I couldn’t ask—”

“I want you to! I like getting my hands dirty.”

He should stop laying it on so thick. Ignatz, cute little dude, looks like a ripe near-sighted tomato as he casts the cottage roof a hesitant glance. It’s looking weathered. A thunderstorm must’ve blown through recently. 

“Well,” Ignatz hedges, “I suppose the gutters…”

Sylvain is not going to tease Ignatz about being asked to _clean his gutters_. He hoists the crate over a single shoulder winsomely. “Say no more.”

-

Ashe has taken the lead on ship repairs, but it’s more than a one-man job, and one man plus one mending woman on crutches won’t cut it either, so now it’s one man, one mending woman on crutches, and one whatever-Felix-is. An event horizon. A gorgeous fucking attitude problem. 

Sylvain hears Annette’s voice floating down the ship corridor first: “Look where I’m pointing. _Look_. Not that one! Does that look like a pyrotechnic valve to you?”

Felix sounds harassed: “I don’t know what a pyrotechnic valve looks like.” 

Ashe, helpful: “It’s the valve with the double latch.”

Felix again: “There are literally a dozen valves with a thousand latches down here.”

Sylvain takes in the scene inside the warm glow of the engine room. The music is upbeat and loud. Felix is lying on his back on top of a mechanic’s creeper; his legs stick out from under the propulsion system. Ashe has busted open the pressure regulator panel and is delicately soldering something together inside.

Sylvain sets the crate down next to Annette, who’s sitting on an empty fuel drum and feeling well enough to boss Felix around. 

“Ignatz said there were a couple items on your list that he couldn’t find in town,” he tells her. “We’ll have to hit up whatever passes for a shipyard out here. How’s our girl looking?”

“She’s hurt,” Annette admits, “but we’ve had worse. I estimate three days. Maybe sooner if Felix figures out his pyrotechnic valves from his thruster valves.”

“Three days isn’t a problem,” Sylvain says. “I’ll take four if it means you don’t overwork yourself.”

Felix rolls himself back out into full view. A large wrench in one hand, a complicated piece of metal in the other. There’s grease on his face, which only makes his eyes stand out more. His arms look good in that shirt. 

“Is it this one?” he asks.

“Yes,” Annette says, a tiny geyser about to go off, “but you weren’t supposed to _take it apart_.”

Ashe laughs and pretends it’s a cough. 

Felix disappears again with a huff.

Annette turns back to Sylvain. “I’m fine, captain,” she says curtly. “Just let me do my job.”

Mercedes already cleared Annette from bedrest. Sylvain has seen enough gunshot wounds to know it’s too early, but this is Annette they’re talking about. Idleness is so far outside her DNA it’s like she’s an alien species. If they made her stay in bed she’d just get triple-injured in an escape attempt. 

Sylvain has his own routine when it comes to getting shot. It used to be that he would slap a bandage on it and then go out and proposition the first eligible person he came across. Good body, nice smile—a halfway decent fuck could get Sylvain out of his head for a few minutes. It was proof of residency: I’m still here. A really good fuck could even make him feel grateful about it. 

If Annette’s version of wrestling back control is just to patch up her broken ship, Sylvain isn’t going to get in her way.

“You’re not the one I’m worried about,” he says instead. “If you make Fraldarius cry we have to give him a 30% passenger refund.” 

Felix grunts back something rude, but Annette’s mouth twitches. Sylvain counts it as a smile.

He says he’ll bring them breakfast. A thermos of coffee for Ashe, side of painkillers for Annette. On his way back off the ship, Sylvain stops at the top of the entry ramp, standing in the mouth of the cargo bay. He takes in the green lushness outside. Duct tape and prayer.

“Good girl,” he says under his breath, stroking the _Scylla_ ’s giant metal hull.

-

The warm morning grows into an even warmer midday. The extra touch of humidity makes Sylvain’s t-shirt stick to his skin. Cleaning the gutters doesn’t take long, but some of the roof shingles are damaged too, so he grabs a toolbox and climbs back up. Ignatz isn’t a fan of heights, says that’s why he’s been dragging his feet when it comes to roof maintenance. He’s missing out: it’s not that high or steep, and the view’s better from up here, extending further out beyond the meadow, revealing the tall shadows of Ignatz’s favorite wind turbines.

Late afternoon, there’s movement in the field: Felix coming down the _Scylla_ ’s landing gear. He bullies his way through the grass and flowers, approaching the cottage. 

“Taking a break?” Sylvain calls down as Felix gets within earshot.

Felix looks for him, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun. “Annette asked me to find new batteries for her cassette player.”

That’s some classic Annette-speak for “you’re driving me crazy and I can’t be around you anymore but I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“Come on up and give me a hand instead,” Sylvain says. 

Halfway through the invitation Sylvain has second thoughts. Trapped twenty feet above ground with Felix Fraldarius: good or really bad idea? It doesn’t matter, Felix is already climbing up the ladder. 

“Have you done any roofing before?” Sylvain asks, holding the ladder steady for him. “It’s easier than spaceship mechanics.”

“Apparently even a toddler could identify the port thrust control.”

“Hah. Don’t take it personally, Annie’s just feeling frustrated. I know she still appreciates you helping out.”

“I owe that much to her.”

Felix makes it onto the roof and finds his footing. He looks back over his shoulder at the distant ground. The height doesn’t appear to affect him. It isn’t until he looks at Sylvain again, suddenly up close and alone, that a hint of discomfort creeps into his shoulders.

Is he thinking about it too? Because the movie theater in Sylvain’s brain has been playing all-day showings of the shit they threw at each other. 

It’s a small roof. The blue sky blazes over them without a single cloud. Nature herself saying, _Hold your fire_. 

Sylvain hefts a flat bar and says, “Alright, let me show you the ropes.”

Felix catches on fast when the task is physical and straightforward. He’s scarily effective with a hammer. They establish a rhythm: pry out the damaged shingle, slide in the new one, nail it back in. Not a lot of talking. Felix has the focus of a missile. 

Meanwhile Sylvain has way less tolerance for sticky silent tension. He breaks less than a half hour in. “Wanna play a game?” 

“What game?”

“One person says two things about themselves that are true, one thing that’s not, and the other person has to guess which one’s the lie.”

Felix makes an indifferent sound. 

“Here, I’ll go first.” Sylvain thinks for a second, then says, “I almost got kicked out of school. I don’t really believe in the Goddess. And I’m a lousy kisser.”

Felix’s hammer strikes the next nail especially aggressively. 

“You’re not a bad kisser,” he says, like he’s resentful those words even have to leave his mouth.

“Aw, thanks Fraldarius,” Sylvain says. Felix pins him with a disgruntled expression. “Your turn.”

“What happened at school?” Felix asks instead.

“It’s a boring story,” Sylvain says. “I was enrolled at the military academy and I didn’t want to be there anymore.” 

To be specific, Sylvain fucking hated it. The rigid rank structure, the whole mythology of it. He met Ingrid and she was the one patch of fresh air in all the pollution, but after a while even that wasn’t enough to prevent him from suffocating. Luckily there was a conduct manual, AKA a guidebook for getting expelled. 

In the end Sylvain could’ve sacrificed a goat in the training yard. Nobody was going to expel a Gautier. 

Felix doesn’t reply immediately. He scrapes his flat bar under another damaged shingle. Then, right when Sylvain’s ready to give up: “I’m allergic to pollen. I took two years of ballet lessons—”

“No way,” Sylvain says.

“—and I don’t like dogs,” Felix says, meeting Sylvain’s eyes.

“You’re lying about the ballet,” Sylvain doubles down. Felix smirks. “Seriously? You did ballet?”

“It teaches discipline. You learn balance and agility and better awareness of your body and your opponent’s.”

Sylvain bites back a grin. It’s only funny in a depressing way. “You did ballet to get better at killing people?”

“More or less,” Felix says.

“Which one is it then?” Sylvain asks. “You do like dogs?”

“I like dogs,” Felix confirms. He drives another nail hard and precise into the roof. 

Sylvain doesn’t expect Felix to keep talking. “I was afraid of them, when I was a kid. My old man said he’d watch me go up to people’s dogs because I wanted to pet them. And I’d put my hand out. But once the dog came too close, I’d get scared and run back to him.”

“Lots of things are scary to kids,” Sylvain says. “They’re two feet tall and they don’t have any autonomy.”

“Kids are taller than two feet,” Felix says.

“How tall are they?”

“I don’t know. Taller. Babies are two feet.”

“Babies don’t have height, Felix, they can’t even stand up.”

“Did you just say ‘babies don’t have height’?”

By the time they finish patching the roof, the day has cooled down. The sky is changing colors. Instead of climbing down the ladder, Felix goes up to the ridge. He sits facing the meadow, legs resting against the roof’s shallow pitch. Loosened up through hours of physical exertion. 

Sylvain follows Felix up. He parks himself further along the ridge. When he steals a glance over, Felix is already staring at him. 

He smiles reflexively. “Is there something on my face?”

Felix stiffens and looks away. “You’re sunburned,” he says.

“Ah shit, really?” 

Sylvain feels his own nose, hot to the touch. He always forgets sunscreen. It’s hard to keep track, cruising through outer space and hopping planets with wildly different climates. He hasn’t seen his own summer freckles in some time.

Felix looks different out here too. In this light, the shine of his hair is almost blue. The air between them has lost its edge. It’s borderline friendly. Obviously that means this is the ideal time for Sylvain to confess offhand: “I bumped into this guy on Sauin, by the way.”

Felix waits for him to continue.

“I think he used to run guns for Miklan. I didn’t know him, but he clearly knew me, and he knew that my dad was still willing to pay to have me brought back home for my spanking.” Sylvain folds his arms over the top of his knees. “That’s how Fleche got tipped off. I brought that shit onboard.”

“Do you want me to blame you for what happened?” Felix asks after a moment. “Because I’m not interested in being your method of self-punishment.”

“You can be a really intense person to talk to, you know that?” Sylvain says. “I’m just saying, cards on the table, you were right. What you said about me not being able to outrun myself.”

“I was pissed off when I said that,” Felix says.

“Yeah, I was too,” Sylvain says. “Doesn’t mean you were wrong.”

He and Miklan may not have shared a crest, but they shared blood. Miklan was half of him. Out of the whole universe, those were the people to whom Sylvain was the most molecularly similar: a passive mother, a narcissist, and their hateful firstborn. That was the kind of shit living within Sylvain, and when he killed Miklan it was like he’d absorbed the other half back into himself, because who else could do what he’d just done? There was nowhere to run from that.

“You did what you did,” Felix says, his gaze heavy and intent. “Don’t let it chase you. Leave it in the past where it belongs.”

“How’s that philosophy working out for you?” Sylvain asks.

The openness in Felix’s face is five seconds away from sealing back up. “Are you trying to start something with me again?”

“I’m not. I promise I’m not trying to be shitty this time.” Sylvain holds both hands up. “We don’t have to talk about the freezer in the room.” 

Felix rolls his eyes, but settles. The effort it takes for him to stand down coils visibly through his body.

Sylvain’s chest carves open at the reminder. This is the same Felix who liked dogs as a kid but didn’t want to get hurt. Felix trained his body for violence, then used it to slow dance with Sylvain around a tiny infirmary. Felix looked him straight in the eye and said “we.” 

Maybe they’re both asking for the same thing from each other. _Hold your fire. Lower your weapon._

When Felix is finally ready, he tells Sylvain: “We knew each other since we were kids.” Each word gets pulled out of him hard and painful like an old tooth. Like he’s saying each one for the first time. “I believed in him. More than I believed in almost anyone else. Then he changed and I told myself I wouldn’t become another blindly devoted wardog. And then he was dead.”

Felix’s jaw tightens. “I thought I was on my own,” he says. “I didn’t know he was alone too.”

He rubs his face, covers his mouth. He’s quiet for a minute.

“We’re going to be stranded here for a few more days,” Sylvain speaks up first.

Felix lowers his hand and says, “I know.”

“This wouldn’t be the worst place in the galaxy to wake someone up. At least it’d give him the chance to thaw out before having to deal with whatever it is that Claude von Riegan wants.”

Felix huffs a breath. “Claude von Riegan wants to mobilize Leicester against Cornelia, in exchange for Faerghus’s military backing when he goes after Thales next.”

Sylvain raises his eyebrows. “Does he plan to throw in with the Adrestian princess? Rumor is she won’t accept the Church as an ally.”

“That’d be part of the negotiation,” Felix says. “Faerghus’s disestablishment from the Church of Seiros.” 

“No shit,” Sylvain says slowly, tasting the idea of it in his mouth. “Brave new world, huh.”

“Brave new world,” Felix says with grim determination. They sit in silence for another moment. Then he asks, “How much is the price on your head anyway?”

Sylvain searches his memory. “I actually don’t know. A couple hundred grand? Why?”

Felix shrugs, straight-faced. 

“Oh—come on. You think ‘cause you’re worth ten million, that makes you a bigger badder criminal than me?”

“You move artwork and give free rides to orphans,” Felix says.

“Illegal artwork! Fake orphans who take shots at me!”

“It’s a forged painting of the Goddess,” Felix says. “You’re not that bad.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sylvain says. “Sorry we can’t all kidnap Dimitri Blaiddyd in an icebox.”

Too soon? Felix has enough of an iota of a sense of humor to say, “Fuck off,” and not sound like he means it. 

Sylvain stretches out. He thought they were sitting further away from each other. In reality they’re close enough that his hand is within reach of Felix’s shoulder.

Felix doesn’t pull back from the touch. He does an odd little thing: tilts his body into it, the slightest degree closer, to receive the connection. 

Ignatz was right about the sunset. Everything glows. Across the meadow Annette and Ashe are coming down from the _Scylla_ too. Their twin indistinct voices carry through the air, their bodies silhouetted against a dark purple sky. The front porch lamps turn on. There’s dinner cooking inside the cottage. Fireflies swarm the garden, lighting the way back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updates getting slower, I’ve been having an overwhelming time irl lately (who hasn’t! 2020!!) but just wanted to say: thanks so much for reading, everyone has been so freaking nice and it’s meant so much to me. hope everyone’s well & staying safe


	10. good morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prince wakes up.

It can take up to an hour to bring someone back safely from cryo. That’s fifteen minutes for the freezer’s vitrification system to stop feeding antifreeze into the chamber. Thirty minutes for body temperature to rise at a rate that won’t shock the brain or damage internal tissue. Once you hit a particular temperature threshold, the person starts to generate their own body heat again. After that, anywhere from five to fifteen more minutes before they’re conscious. 

An hour is a long time for Felix to stand rooted to the same spot, waiting.

“Felix,” Sylvain finally says, rubbing his forehead, “will you sit down? You’re stressing me out.”

Dimitri Blaiddyd has reached the threshold. Tremors run through his body. It’s less spooky than when he’d just been lying there like a corpse; more distressing. It’s the kind of sight that pokes at the primal part of a person’s brain that can’t stand to see a packmate suffering in the cold. 

“Something’s wrong,” Felix says. “Is it always like this?”

“Shivering is a very normal reaction.” Mercedes pats the spot on the bed between herself and Sylvain. “Come sit. It won’t be long now.”

They could’ve elected to defrost Dimitri onboard the privacy of the _Scylla_ , but Sylvain’d figured hey, why not let the lost prince of Faerghus wake up inside a real house. Ignatz is out of the picture for the next couple of days, living his own life. The rest of the crew is keeping busy with day two of ship repairs. We’re strangers, Mercedes had reasoned. We shouldn’t overwhelm him. 

Felix sits, agitated. His thigh wedges against Sylvain’s. “How do we explain how we’ve gone from a crew of six to seven?” he mutters.

“I’ll just say he’s one of my Gloucester contacts and he’s meeting up with us to work the next job.”

Felix isn’t satisfied. “Then why did we have to rely on Ignatz to put us up?”

“I don’t know, Felix, why are you riding my ass—”

Then Dimitri Blaiddyd’s good eye flies open and he wakes up with a ragged shout. 

Sylvain almost jumps out of his own skin. The squeeze of Felix’s leg against his own becomes crushing. 

Dimitri was already large when he was curled up fetal and unmoving. Awake, his size becomes intimidating, even despite the visible loss of what must’ve been five tons of muscle mass. He throws off all the blankets. Sits up naked, disoriented, breathing heavily, his hands scrabbling against the freezer’s inner padding like an animal in a cage trap. 

Meanwhile Felix, who slaughtered two dozen of Cornelia’s men in the dead of night and carried Dimitri halfway across the galaxy by the skin of his teeth, has suddenly lost all ability to act. 

He just stares at Dimitri. Sitting there like an egg cracked open, the yolk of him dripping into the room. 

Shit. Sylvain may have made the wrong call here.

New plan. Sylvain approaches first: nice and slow, dropping onto his right knee to put himself eye level with Dimitri. Mercedes follows his lead, on standby with warm fluids and hot compresses. 

Dense white scar tissue covers Dimitri’s missing right eye. His left eye darts across Sylvain’s face, incredibly blue, bright with suspicion. He stinks of chemically sweet antifreeze.

“Your Highness,” Sylvain says. He bows his head. Five years on the lam haven’t deprogrammed the etiquette lessons. “You were asleep for a while.” 

Dimitri’s throat clicks. He rumbles, “I don’t know you.”

“We haven’t met yet.” Sylvain keeps his tone easy, his movements predictable. “I’m Sylvain and this is my friend Mercedes.”

“Welcome back,” Mercedes says gently from Sylvain’s left. “If you’re thirsty, I’ve prepared some tea.”

“We’re on Gloucester,” Sylvain adds. “You’re safe.”

There’s nothing in Dimitri’s expression to suggest he’s fully processing any of this.

How had Sylvain pictured this playing out in his head? Maybe he’d just wanted to look into the future king’s face for himself, as if that alone would strike him with newfound loyalty and meaning. In an instant the path forward would feel inevitable. The broken garden Sylvain’d left behind would blossom with resurrected belief. 

But then Dimitri’s gaze falls onto a spot behind Sylvain’s shoulder. “Felix,” he says, sitting up straighter. The uncertainty falls off his face. What’s left is pure ravaged emotion. 

Felix says nothing, and Sylvain doesn’t turn to look, but the bed creaks as Felix stands, pulled forward by an invisible rope. 

“Felix,” Dimitri repeats, anguished. “They’ve killed you too.”

The rope snaps. Felix kneels abruptly at Sylvain’s other side. The weight of his body lands with a hollow punch that shakes through the floorboards. 

“No,” Felix says, so rough he sounds almost angry. He grabs one of the discarded blankets off the floor. “I’m here.”

Sylvain falls back to allow Felix the space to drape the blanket around Dimitri’s shoulders. The sensation startles Dimitri. His eye locks onto Felix’s face, a murky ocean slowly clearing. Felix says it again, with savage feeling: “I’m right here.”

-

For the next few hours Dimitri bounces between restless irritability and detachment. This too Mercedes says is normal. A forgivable side effect of being in cryostasis for nearly a month. 

A bigger issue is the way he reacts to Mercedes drawing a bath. It flips some kind of switch. One foot into the tub and Dimitri starts to struggle against Mercedes’ grip on his arm. Water splashes everywhere. Dimitri’s muscles bunch up in preparation; his breath becomes quiet little gasps. That’s body language Sylvain recognizes in a heartbeat.

In the end Felix takes over and watches over Dimitri as he sits in the empty drained tub and wipes his body down with a warm wet cloth. 

Sylvain hangs out in the hallway with Mercedes. There’s the eye, she says. Beyond that, from what she can tell, surface wounds are healing, broken bones were set properly, and if Dimitri was bled the way Felix describes, it was never to the point of organ failure. 

He’ll have a swift physical recovery, given rest and nutrition and exercise. His captors were precious with him. 

“It’s not all physical,” Sylvain says, half a question.

“No,” Mercedes agrees. “But rest and nutrition and exercise will help with that too.”

Ashe brings by a bundle of clean underwear and clothes. The shirts are Sylvain’s: he’d followed his gut and asked Ashe to grab only loose button-downs. Something where Dimitri doesn’t have to tug a collar over his head. The pants are Dedue’s: they’ll fit Dimitri more comfortably than Sylvain’s, though the cuffs will need to be rolled up, the waist belted. Annette’s hair ties, because right now a haircut is out of the question. Dimitri seems unwelcoming of hands near his face, let alone scissors. 

On top of the pile rests a familiar pair of wool socks. One of Ashe’s holiday gifts from his siblings last year. At the time the _Scylla_ had taken a string of jobs keeping her away from the Garreg Mach post stop. It was months before Ashe was finally able to pick up the package. Hand-knit winter accessories, while half of Fódlan was already well into spring. Ashe wore them around anyway, proudly sweating his ass off. 

“I read that it’s important to keep your feet warm after cryo,” Ashe tells Felix as he drops off the delivery, to which Felix says, “Thanks.” 

When Ashe goes back downstairs, Mercedes catches Sylvain’s attention, inclines her head. _Us too._

This isn’t a reunion that Sylvain is meant to witness, but he can’t help himself. He steals a glimpse through the bathroom door on the way past. Felix sits on the edge of the tub. Dimitri, still naked, is gathering his hair back and tying it up into a sloppy knot.

Felix says something, low and terse. Dimitri stills. He looks at Felix, his expression hidden from Sylvain’s view. He says something back. His voice is even lower, the words even harder to make out. 

Whatever he says makes Felix touch his own hair: the length of it chopped short, yet gradually growing back out again. 

-

“Hey, can I ask?” Sylvain says later as he’s peeling and deveining a bowl of raw shrimp. “What’s your read on, you know,” he gestures with his knife towards the window above the kitchen sink.

The shrimp is for the stew that’s already simmering on the stove, as Dedue stirs occasionally. “His Highness?” he asks.

When Sylvain nods, Dedue considers this and says, “He has not had a gentle life.”

Finished, Sylvain wipes his hands on his apron. “Felix told you he lost his sense of taste when he lost his family, right?”

“He did,” Dedue says. “I have some ideas about how to experiment with texture instead.”

He takes the bowl from Sylvain to rinse off the shrimp at the sink, and speaks up again over the cold running water: “Food has always helped me feel closer to my loved ones. I imagine it’d be painful to be robbed of that too.”

The stew smells aromatic and spicy. Dedue adds the shrimp to the pot. It’s weird to Sylvain, how dishes you never ate growing up can still become associated with home.

He looks back out the window, where Dimitri is getting some fresh air in the meadow. “I’m worried I steered us straight into the lion’s den.”

“If he’s a lion, he’s a wounded one.”

Sylvain half-smiles. “Different lion.”

“Faerghus,” Dedue says.

“That’s the one,” Sylvain says. “I don’t know what happens when we land on Derdriu, but my guess is we’re going to come out more involved in this war than when we fly in.” 

Dedue checks on the bread baking in the oven next. He’s really going all out lately. Taking every advantage of Ignatz’s fully stocked and functional kitchen before it’s back to cooking in a tiny spaceship galley.

“Should Cornelia succeed in suppressing the rebellion, those who have resettled on Kleiman would suffer too,” Dedue says as he pulls out the golden loaf. “The ruination of Faerghus doesn’t benefit my people. Better to restore its king and help it survive past this conflict.”

Here’s the last conflict Sylvain survived: before Conand there was Gautier, and there was Sreng, and there was a contested satellite moon floating between them. You started out fighting for some big devoted cause and you ended up fighting just to go home, except Sylvain didn’t want to go home so he was just fighting. His father expedited him to platoon leader. Forty men whose lives were his responsibility. They sat in the trenches getting strafed by gunships all night. A guy on the mortar crew abandoned his weapon. The guy who replaced him got shot through the head. Eventually Sylvain crawled through the dirt and the death and he brought down both Srengi gunships with an RPG. 

The fiery sky went silent. Someone was yelling at someone else to call in an air evac. Sylvain sat slumped inside the gun pit, ears buzzing. He studied the dead man lying next to him. He was one of Sylvain’s. His cheekbone had been blasted to pieces and his teeth were broken. His eyes were open. There was a torn up pack of smokes in his front pocket. Sylvain took it off him and lit up in the darkness and breathed in a deep, unsteady drag. 

Inside a sunny kitchen on Gloucester, Sylvain blows a heavy breath back out. “After everything they’ve done,” after everything _I_ did, “you think that’s fair?” 

Dedue sets the bread aside to cool and turns to Sylvain with the firm weight of his judgment.

“You misunderstand me, captain,” he says. “I wish Faerghus to survive so that it may pay restitution.”

-

The next morning Sylvain finds Felix sitting against the outside of the garden shed, decapitating wildflowers with his combat knife, watchful of the shadow inside.

“Sleep well?” Sylvain asks, even though he knows for a fact that Felix came out here at early dawn because Sylvain was already awake then too. 

If Felix is tired, he doesn’t allow it to show in the set of his shoulders. “Fine.”

“How about His Highness?”

“I’m not his keeper,” Felix says. Sylvain is going to go ahead and assume Felix’s bad mood has nothing to do with him, because for once in his life Sylvain hasn’t done shit to provoke it.

Felix seems to realize this too. His mouth twists. He modifies the harshness of his tone. “He was out here when I left for bed and still here when I woke up.”

Add insomnia to the list, then. Dimitri’s awareness improved as the day went on yesterday, but it’s obvious he needs more time to feel comfortable being around people again. He speaks mostly to Felix, choppy conversations behind half-closed doors. Back and forth: Cornelia has to pay for her crimes; going after Cornelia vengeful and unprepared and alone will only result in more fruitless bloodshed; there’s no guarantee of Claude von Riegan’s trustworthiness; does Dimitri doubt Felix’s judgment? 

Each exchange ends with Felix storming out, bitter and frustrated. The reality is that you can steal somebody back from death’s embrace but when they return to you, they return to you with everything. Every old wound and argument comes back pumping blood too.

Sylvain can’t exactly say he’s jealous of the way Felix looks at Dimitri. He couldn’t stomach the high expectations. 

“I can take over for a while,” Sylvain says, “if you want to get something to eat, or just take a breather. Send Claude an update.”

For a moment Sylvain doesn’t think Felix will agree to it. Felix glances back over his shoulder. He sheaths his knife and stands up. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Take your time,” Sylvain says. “Trust me, I won’t leave.”

Something small changes in Felix’s face. He makes his retreat before Sylvain can pinpoint what it is. He leaves Sylvain standing there with a grip inside his chest. A feeling that won’t be killed. 

He’ll deal with that later. Inside the garden shed, Dimitri is checking out Ignatz’s artwork. Sylvain stays on Dimitri’s left side. 

“Mind if I join you?”

Dimitri shifts his weight, sizing up the threat. When he decides there is none, he gives a single shake of his head. 

The false portrait of the Goddess has already been loaded onto the _Scylla_. Ignatz knows his stuff: the stained canvas, the brush strokes and signature, the texture and colors of old paint. Leonie is set to make a killing.

The paintings left inside the shed are Ignatz’s originals. When he’s not forging religious iconography, it appears that Ignatz has a good eye for landscapes. The one on the easel that has Dimitri’s attention is of Fhirdiad. Ribbons of green-blue aurora lights swirling over the Itha Plains. 

“Missing home?” Sylvain asks, just to talk.

Dimitri says, deep and gravelly: “You are the ship’s captain.”

“That’s me.”

“Then you can set a new course back to Fhirdiad.”

“Unfortunately I’m getting paid a lot of money to bring you to Derdriu,” Sylvain says. And most of that money is being eaten up by ship repairs. 

Dimitri makes a disgusted noise. “That _woman_ is a butcher. While we dawdle here uselessly, she sits on my father’s throne, sleeping in the bed where my father once slept.”

Sylvain shrugs, casual but not relaxed. “You’ll do better by your own people if you secure an alliance with Leicester than if you get yourself killed storming the castle. I’m pretty sure the late king can let this one slide.”

“Do not presume to know anything about my father,” Dimitri says, teeth bared. 

Sylvain winces. “You’re right. That was an overstep.” 

He’s more cautious with what he says next, feeling for the tightrope with his feet, trying to reach across the fault line of Dimitri’s pain and loss. “We’ll get you home, Your Highness. But the way back isn’t always linear.”

Dimitri turns his eye back to the painting. Sylvain has never witnessed the aurora lights in person, but they’re infamous. It’s not all barren rock and ice out there in Faerghus. 

“And what of your home?” Dimitri asks.

“I haven’t been in as much of a rush as you to return,” Sylvain says. “To tell the truth, I originally had my sights set in the opposite direction.”

Dimitri huffs, a humorless laugh. “Perhaps your path isn’t so linear either.”

-

Ignatz visits that evening with groceries and, because he is ultimately a person who is good friends with Leonie: a shitload of local Gloucester wine.

They finish three bottles out on the back porch and carve up a watermelon. Mercedes sits on the wooden steps amidst some cushions to teach Ignatz an Adrestian fishing card game. Ashe and Dedue occupy one half of the daybed swing, plotting the route to Derdriu. Annette occupies the other half as she describes the model of the replacement boost synchronizer that she needs Sylvain to scavenge at the shipyard.

When Felix joins them, he chooses to plant himself on the arm of Sylvain’s patio chair instead of sitting like a normal person. He mostly listens; contributes occasionally.

Then Dimitri emerges from the shed to join them too, maybe finally hungry enough or fatigued enough or simply bored enough. 

Sylvain has a fairly chatty crew besides Dedue, but there’s a good handful of seconds where everyone’s collective mouths snap shut and nobody knows what to say. 

Dedue puts them all out of their misery and gestures to the last remaining chair and says, “Would you like to sit?”

Dimitri sits. Dedue hands him a slice of watermelon. He stares at it like it’s a grenade, comprehends that it’s just fruit, and takes it. 

Sylvain is sitting close enough to feel the muscles of Felix’s leg tighten, then release.

Ignatz turns to Sylvain and says, “Ah, is this your friend?”

“Yeah, this is—uh,” Sylvain’s mind goes completely blank, “this is, uhhh—”

“Thomas,” Dimitri says. 

Annette barks out a surprised giggle, then slaps a hand over her mouth. 

“Sorry!” she squeaks. “I’m ticklish.”

Ashe is quick to corroborate: “I was tickling her.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Thomas,” Ignatz says, textbook friendly and polite.

“Yes,” Dimitri says. “You as well.”

Sylvain’s buzzed and he’s tired. The absurdity of this whole situation hits him like a bag of bricks. He makes the mistake of making eye contact with Annette. She mouths, _Thomas!_

Sylvain’s shoulder hunch up. He turns his face away, trying to hide helplessly behind Felix’s back. He hears Annette squeak again with laughter. They look like lunatics. 

Felix twists around, peering down at Sylvain’s breathless grin. “What’s wrong with you?” 

It’s too stupid to express outloud. That’s Dimitri Blaiddyd, wearing Sylvain’s gaudiest button-down shirt, passing the same uninspired alias back and forth because both he and Felix only know one other fucking name. Every self-interested, desperate, half-informed decision Sylvain ever made and somehow this is where it all dropped him anyway. 

-

The crew peels off one by one. Ignatz’s guestroom only fits two: Annette (dibs on the first twin bed, on account of her leg) and Mercedes (won tonight’s lottery for the second bed and is sharing it with Dedue, a sleeping arrangement where Dedue lies on the mattress and Mercedes lies on Dedue). Dimitri gets the couch downstairs, whether or not he’ll actually use it.

Whoever’s left crashes on the _Scylla_. Ashe heads starboard with a yawn and a wave. “Have a good night, Felix.”

“You too,” Felix says with a nod.

“What about me?” Sylvain calls out after Ashe.

“See you tomorrow, captain!”

“Is he going with you?” Felix asks as they walk together, portside. The _Scylla_ creaks and hums, her white noise welcoming them back onboard. 

“Yeah, shipyards are basically paradise to him and Annie,” Sylvain says, which makes Felix smile. Anytime Sylvain sees it, he gets why Felix keeps it under tight lock and key. That shit is potent to look at. 

“Everything goes well, we’ll be on our way by tomorrow nightfall,” he continues. 

“Good. We’ve been delayed for long enough.”

“Claude knows we can’t enter through Derdriu’s main spaceport, right? The _Scylla_ won’t hold up to a customs inspection.”

“I have his coordinates to a private airfield,” Felix says. “He’ll meet us there.”

Sylvain smiles wryly. “If he ever wants to shut down our little operation and seize the ship, he’s got our number now.”

Felix says, “I wouldn’t let that happen.” He adds, “Besides, von Riegan’s ambitions seem to go beyond rounding up petty thieves.”

“Petty,” Sylvain laughs, palm to his heart. “Ouch.”

When they reach Felix’s quarters, Sylvain leans against the wall. He vividly remembers walking down this corridor with a gun to his head. “I think this has been the longest month of my life.”

The door’s open but Felix doesn’t step through yet. He studies Sylvain for a moment. “Do you regret it?”

That pushes Sylvain off-balance. “Ask me again when it’s all over,” he says, but now he’s curious. “Why? Do you?”

“Keeping track of regrets is a waste of time,” Felix says, then frowns. “I’m not going to answer the same question you just dodged.”

“Fair enough.” Sylvain knows his own answer. Conceding it honestly is a different story. “Knowing what I know now, if we were back on Garreg Mach and you approached us—”

“You approached me,” Felix says.

“You’re such a brat,” Sylvain says admiringly. “Sure, let’s go with that. I approached you.”

His tongue is made of stone in his mouth. He doesn’t understand why this feels so hard. To say: I’d let you in again. To admit that if he stops hiding, the world that finds him may not all be that bad. 

Felix gets it, right? Felix has to see it in him. Goddess, who could miss it?

“You’d say yes again,” Felix says. His eyes pin Sylvain down like a searchlight.

“Yeah,” Sylvain says. “Yes.”

He half expects someone to walk in with a rocket launcher this time. But all that happens is Felix making the decision to kiss him. 

It’s not the bruising frantic kiss from the first time. Felix fits their bodies against each other and kisses him slow. Slow’s different from soft. Felix is hungry for it, lapping at Sylvain’s open, already panting mouth. It makes Sylvain feel nervous and hot, makes his heart go like crazy. They’re so close to each other he can smell the sweat and soap in Felix’s hair. When he wraps his arms around Felix, he can feel the blistering heat of Felix’s skin through his shirt.

Slow, heavy kissing. Kissing that turns Sylvain’s brain to mush. He gropes at Felix’s incredible body and angles his head wherever Felix wants him. Felix wants Sylvain flattened against the wall because apparently that’s his favorite move. All of Felix’s uncompromising intensity, solely dedicated to the new objective of relearning every inch of Sylvain’s mouth. His hands cup the back of Sylvain’s neck, tugging at Sylvain’s hair. Sylvain moans a little, unashamed. It feels that good. It feels like they’ve both stopped holding their breath underwater.

Felix pulls away first. The air between them is humid. Sylvain’s lips are sore and tender. Felix exhales, gazing up, and Sylvain is gratified to see that Felix also looks affected. Fuzzy and punch-drunk, color spread across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. 

When Felix lets go, Sylvain almost buckles. Sei _ros_. Since when did kissing feel like this?

Felix looks Sylvain up and down. He says, “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Okay,” Sylvain manages, experiencing some whiplash, but alright. No harm no foul if Felix wants to end the night here.

Felix takes a step through his door. He stops at the edge of the tight orbit they’ve formed. He glances back over his shoulder. 

“Are you coming?” he asks. 

And what can Sylvain do except follow.


	11. starboy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No more running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating bump this chapter, a bit of sex and a bit of body horror (the duality of sylvain)   
>  the body horror involves eyeballs; if you wanna avoid, it starts with “It’s Dimitri’s turn next” and ends with “Felix glances down at his cards”

“Hey, captain.”

“Ngh,” Sylvain says. There’s some sort of distant banging. 

“ _Captain_. Are you up yet?”

That’s Ashe. Sylvain kicks off the blanket and climbs off the bunk and stumbles to the door. He pulls it open, rubbing his eyes. “I’m up, I’m up.”

Ashe startles and turns. He’s standing further down the corridor, knocking on the door to the captain’s quarters. Which is not where Sylvain is. Because Sylvain is—ohhh, yeah. 

Ashe’s eyebrows fly up. Is Sylvain wearing underwear? He is. Thank the Goddess for small mercies. 

“Good morning,” Sylvain says. His voice is noticeably kind of fucked up. 

“I’ll bet,” Ashe says, after a moment. “We should get going soon. I’ll wait for you next to the truck, okay?”

Sylvain is awake enough now to feel sheepish. “I’ll come find you in a few minutes.”

Ashe departs for the cargo bay, but not before Sylvain sees that fucking grin, Ubert. 

Sylvain closes the door. Felix is awake too, lying on his stomach, peering back at Sylvain. The blanket is halfway on the floor. At best it preserves the modesty of Felix’s calves. Felix’s entire naked back is visible, the generous swell of his ass. Sex glow for days. 

“Well done,” Felix says.

“Oh I would’ve loved to see you handle that any better.”

Sylvain returns to sit at the edge of the bunk. He needs a second to memorize the view, which Felix endures unselfconsciously before losing patience and reaching up. Sylvain leans down on command. 

It’d been the same pattern last night. Felix’s energy was undeniable. The single-minded way Felix started unbuckling Sylvain’s pants. “Get undressed,” Felix said without taking his mouth off Sylvain’s throat, and Sylvain couldn’t tug his shirt over his head fast enough.

Sylvain could’ve guessed that Felix looked good naked and wet. That he was made of toned muscle and he had a pretty dick. Some of the other details were wondrously unexpected. Like how far a blush could travel down Felix’s chest. Or how shampooing Felix’s hair made that pretty dick fatten up. Or just how obsessed Felix was with kissing. 

They wasted water, making out in the tiny shower stall. Sylvain licked water droplets from Felix’s clean shoulder. Water streamed down Felix’s chest, dripping off Felix’s hazy face and onto Sylvain’s as Sylvain sank to his knees. 

It felt like getting a prime directive transmitted straight into his brain: suck this guy’s dick like it’s a gift. It’d been some time since he last fooled around with another man, rubbed a cock on his face and got to appreciate the smell and size and texture of it in his mouth, and—well, absence makes the heart fonder and all that.

Felix wasn’t very vocal. No problem, Sylvain liked a good challenge in bed. He gave sloppy, eager head. He took breaks to lick and suck gently on Felix’s balls. Anything to make Felix’s breath jump or get Felix’s grip to tighten around Sylvain’s hair. Felix was pent up but he wasn’t shy. When he liked something he made sure Sylvain knew it. Sylvain’s scalp hurt from how much Felix liked him. His own cock hung heavy and aching between his legs. 

By then Felix was panting audibly. His hand kept soothing and petting at Sylvain’s hair when it wasn’t pulling. He curled forward, his other arm bracing the shower wall, the water hitting his back. Like he was shielding Sylvain from the spray. 

Tenderness electrified Sylvain’s body. He flicked his gaze up. Eye contact with Felix was practically a physical touch. He saw and heard as Felix choked out an astonished little groan. 

Precome dribbled against Sylvain’s tongue. Felix’s hips rocked forward with greedy instinct. Sylvain forgot to feel self-satisfied, he was so fucking turned on, moaning around a mouthful of Felix’s cock, swallowing him deeper until his nose was buried against Felix’s pubic hair. 

He was looking up at Felix again when Felix came down his throat with this low and sexy _growl_. Sylvain’s knees were sore; his lungs burned. The jolt of affection he felt looking into Felix’s naked, wet, defenseless face was so clear it was almost destabilizing. 

Afterwards Sylvain got off humping Felix into the shower wall, mouthing hotly at Felix’s neck and shoulder. His cockhead smeared against the groove of Felix’s hip. Felix felt perfect to grind against. He helped Sylvain along, slotting their bodies together, squeezing the meat of Sylvain’s ass. When he rubbed two fingers against Sylvain’s asshole, Sylvain made a rough, desperate sound. “Fuck,” he said, “yes, please.” The shower was too small, there wasn’t any lube. Felix didn’t do any more than toy with him, pulling and stretching at Sylvain’s tight rim. But just the idea of it, getting fucked, getting Felix all the way inside him, made Sylvain come. He bit down on Felix’s shoulder and soaked Felix’s hard stomach. His thighs trembled from the effort to stay standing. Through it all he could still taste Felix in his throat.

Felix, still looking dazed and disheveled from his own orgasm, muttered, “Holy shit,” and between gulps of air Sylvain echoed, “Ho-ly shit.”

And now, if they keep kissing like this, Ashe is going to have to go on that scavenging trip alone.

Sylvain has just enough self-control to pull away with a rueful smile. “Don’t get up,” he coaxes. “Stay in bed until I come back.”

Felix makes a derisive noise even as he scans down Sylvain’s bare chest, clearly interested. “I have work to do.”

Sylvain does too. It’s a nice fantasy, though. He gets up and starts collecting his clothes. “Big plans for our last day on the third most beautiful planet in the galaxy?”

Felix indulges Sylvain with a flatly amused look. “Fourth this year, I’ve heard.”

“Shit, what happened?” Sylvain laughs. “If I’d known that I would’ve flown us to Daphnel instead. I should be showing you the sights.” 

“You make a better smuggler than tour guide,” Felix says, sitting up. “That one’s mine.”

Sylvain tosses Felix his shirt. Felix catches it. The naturalness of the moment accidentally makes Sylvain open his mouth again:

“Do you want to sleep over again tonight?”

Sylvain is well-educated in morning-after behavior. The flash of hesitancy across Felix’s face—Felix, who typically has the velocity and momentum of a comet—is enough to trip an alarm.

Felix says haltingly: “I can’t stay, after we dock on Derdriu.”

Okay then. Sylvain recovers from that particular roundhouse kick to the chest by saying, “Did you hear me ask you to stay?”

He’s acting too obviously defensive. It’s too early in the morning; the sex was too good; Sylvain forgot to put his guard back up. He finishes tucking in his shirt and buckling his pants so at least he won’t be wholly unarmored.

“I don’t know what your expectations are,” says Felix, “or if they’ve changed.” His haven’t, is what he’s saying. 

“Look, you don’t have to worry about me,” Sylvain responds. “I know the score.”

“There’s no score.” Felix is annoyed now. Almost hurt. “Do you need me to say it? I like you. I like your crew. I’m not trying to be an asshole.” 

Sylvain doesn’t actually have to be an asshole either. They don’t have to drive each other back into a corner over something that’s been true from day one, whether or not Sylvain knew it yet. From the day they met Felix’s horizon was illuminated by the lion’s head. The reform of his homeland, the safeguard of its eventual king.

Sylvain inhales and loosens up his posture. Attempts to recalibrate. In his line of work, getting this amount of what he wanted is still a pretty good fucking deal. 

“Sorry,” Sylvain says. “I’m sorry. Can we start over? Hey, Felix, good morning. Did you have fun last night?”

Felix watches Sylvain like he’s waiting for a trap. “I had a good time.”

“Me too,” Sylvain says. “And if you really want this to be a one-off, I get it. But we have a couple days left, so I’m just thinking, why not make the most of the time.”

Felix is miles from the open, relaxed mood he woke up in. But, searching whatever expression is on Sylvain’s face, his own expression unlocks again, bolt by bolt. 

“Come over here,” he says. 

Sylvain goes and is rewarded with Felix’s hand on his jaw, guiding him down into another kiss. When Sylvain pulls away this time, it’s only far enough to lean his forehead against Felix’s.

“I like you too,” Sylvain says.

“That much is obvious,” Felix says, arrogant bastard, as if he doesn’t seem privately pleased to hear it. 

-

The shipyard’s owner, Anna, is a stone cold businesswoman. She insists on getting paid not only for whatever parts they salvage, but also a) an entrance fee, b) a fee for closing down the shipyard for the rest of the morning so they won’t be interrupted, and c) a fee for keeping her mouth shut about the fact that they were here at all.

With some charm and effort, Ashe haggles her price down so that she’s still screwing them over but at least it’s a little gentler. A little more loving.

“Speaking of screwing,” Ashe says.

“ _Ashe_ ,” Sylvain says, pretending to be scandalized. Together they haul their new-old boost synchronizer to the cargo truck. They rescued it from an abandoned survey vessel with a badly ruptured hull. Different ship class from the _Scylla_ , but same era and manufacturer. 

“I’m kidding! I don’t want to hear any of the details.” Ashe jumps out the back of the truck once the synchronizer is strapped down and secured. “Can we check out the other goods while we’re here?”

A civilian landspeeder has been on Ashe’s wishlist for some time. The truck gets the job done, but it can’t compare to the agility of even a decades-old retired winged mule. Sylvain stands back and watches as Ashe moons over the anti-gravity repulsor tech (“I can’t believe nobody’s stripped her for parts yet”) and the sleek, simplistic design (“they keep kitting out the newer models but it only makes them overcomplicated, you know what I mean, captain?”). 

“We’re a little strapped for cash right now,” Sylvain has to speak up before Ashe can get too attached. This next delivery to Leonie should pay a windfall, but until then they’re being bankrolled mainly by Felix and whatever’s left of his rainy day suicide mission funds. 

“I know.” Ashe is wistful. “I just think having a smoother way to get around planetside would be really good for us.”

“How much weight can one of these carry anyway?” Sylvain asks. 

“Not as much as the truck,” Ashe says truthfully. “She’d be trading cargo capacity for speed. But if you retrofit the thrusters, you could make up some of the difference that way.”

Ashe isn’t known to ask for things. He’s looking at the landspeeder like it’s a golden puppy in a window. 

So Sylvain says, “Go ask Anna how much it’d set us back.”

Happy surprise lights up Ashe’s face. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Sylvain inspects the landspeeder more closely while Ashe is gone. When he gives her starter switch a turn, her turbines spit and purr for him, frail but determined. She floats a weak half-foot above the dirt.

He grins to himself. Not bad; she just needs some work and attention. They took a blow to their low-atmo transport options when they lost the passenger shuttle. It _would_ be handy to have a vehicle that could hover across rough terrain. Like if they ever find themselves on Galatea’s desert surface again, or somewhere else hypothetically in that neighborhood. A hypothetical planet or moon nearby.

Well over a minute goes by. Sylvain goes searching for his pilot. The shipyard is fenced by tall chain link wire. Anna’s office is right past the main gated entrance, a small garage with giant signs like NO REFUNDS and In Seiros We Trust, All Others Pay Cash.

Sylvain heads for the gate, calling out: “Ashe, buddy—”

From out of nowhere he’s being grabbed by the arm and yanked behind a tower of decommissioned space skiffs. Three stacked on top of each other, barricading him from view.

Ashe’s palm forms a tight seal over Sylvain’s mouth. He uses his smaller body to box Sylvain against the wall of scrap metal, forcing them both to be still and silent. He’s deadly serious, light green eyes gone dark.

Sylvain doesn’t fight. Doesn’t move a muscle. A second later he hears what Ashe must’ve heard. 

Anna first, without any of her sly playfulness: “—sign says we’re closed—”

The other person sounds like a much older man. Another freelancer like Fleche? Or a fed?

“Gradivus-class transport, grounded for repairs—”

Anna doesn’t budge. Credit where credit’s due, the woman will rob you blind, but she follows through on her promises.

“—haven’t—fits the description—none of your business anyway—” 

“—asking your permission to search the premises is a mere courtesy—”

Ashe radiates tension. His palm tastes damp and salty. Sylvain maintains eye contact as he jerks his head towards the direction they came.

Ashe goes first, staying low. One way or another, each of them has been made a thief, but Ashe is the only one who can move like this, sure-footed and unseen.

Sylvain hangs back for an extra second. His pistol is sitting inside the safe in Anna’s office: no weapons allowed in her shipyard. He weighs his options. Try to get himself and Ashe out of here unarmed. Try to rearm himself and risk being spotted in the process. 

It’d help if he knew who Anna was talking to. 

There’s a small spacecraft parked on the other side of the fence that wasn’t there earlier. An auxiliary ship that services a larger star destroyer. Black coat of paint.

The back of Sylvain’s neck starts to prickle with sweat. 

He inches towards the edge of the skiffs. Across the path is a row of beat-up old hoverbikes. One of their handlebar mirrors is angled just right. He gets a glimpse of Anna’s conversation partner. 

There’s two of them. An old man and a young woman. Each wears a dark cloak, their hoods lowered, their faces pale.

Mother _fucker._

He catches up to Ashe. “Go,” Sylvain grits out. “ _Go._ ”

They run weaving through the metal maze of the shipyard. Anna grows more argumentative and pissed off behind them.

“—know who you are, and last I checked you have no right to be here either—”

The cargo truck is where they left it, blending in with the junk ships. Ashe boosts himself up swiftly into the driver’s seat.

“—whole sector still falls outside your territory so unless you have a signed note from Lorenz Whateverman Gloucester, you can get the fuck off my private property—”

Then it all abruptly stops. No sound of a struggle. The shipyard just goes silent. Cold dread shoots up Sylvain’s spine. 

A crow cries out overhead. 

Ashe’s hand is frozen on the ignition. He stares down at Sylvain. Is she—? 

Sylvain slams the driver’s side door, his anger laced with panic. Anna’s dead or she isn’t; either way there’s nothing they can do for her in their position.

Ashe starts the truck. Sylvain does not circle around to the passenger side. 

“Captain,” Ashe hisses through the open window. “Let’s go.”

Here’s the problem: a cargo truck versus an auxiliary ship? On most planets that’s called a one-horse race. Sylvain is beginning to see only one route that doesn’t end with both of them being followed, chased, and killed. 

“Listen to me,” Sylvain says, short and tight. “You’re going to drive back to the cottage by yourself. You’re not going to wait for me.”

Ashe has the kind of skin that reveals everything. His cheeks are ruddy with emotion. “Like hell I’m doing any of that.”

“ _Listen_. You’re not going to wait. You’re going to install that synchronizer as fast as you can and if I make it back in time, great, and if I don’t, you’re going to boost all the way to Derdriu and you’re not going to slow down for anyone.”

Ashe keeps shaking his head. “Let’s go together,” he pleads. 

“I’m not asking,” Sylvain says. “This is an order. You’re my pilot. Everyone else is dead in the water without you.”

He raps his knuckles against the truck door and finishes, “Keep your head down and hang tight until I’ve cleared the path for you.”

Ashe looks furious at Sylvain for pulling rank. That’s good. Better than when he looked like he was about to cry. “I hate it when you pull this kind of crap,” he says thickly.

“I know,” Sylvain says.

It’s not as if Sylvain rolled out of bed this morning ready to lay it all on the line for lost king and fractured country. But he did wake up next to Felix Fraldarius, and who knows how that sort of thing will fuck with a man’s brain. 

-

He splits up from Ashe. He makes noise. He picks up a length of loose pipe along the way and scrapes it across something’s metal body. He is aggressively unstealthy. When he reaches the landspeeder, he gives her a quick pat before hopping into her open-air cockpit.

Sylvain learns that the two Agarthans have also split up when it’s the young woman who rounds the corner alone to discover him first. 

Her eyes are an alarming shade of red. They narrow as she drops into a crouch and yells, “Solon!” 

The landspeeder has enough juice left to take Sylvain for a short-lived joyride. He goes plowing straight at Red at full speed. 

She snarls and jumps out of the way. Lucky for Sylvain, who wasn’t feeling optimistic about the landspeeder’s ability to shake off the impact. In the rearview he sees Red launch herself back onto her feet. Then she’s chasing after Sylvain on foot like a fucking terminator. 

He banks left, towards the gate, so hard that the entire landspeeder almost flips over. She handles the exact way you’d expect a muddy shipyard gem to handle: rough and unpredictable like an unbridled horse. 

Red gives up running. No—she has some kind of gun. Her first shot hits one of the thrusters. The landspeeder jolts and stutters. Starts leaking a smoke trail of charred metal. 

Sylvain bites out a curse. That’s not regular ammunition, that’s laser weaponry. 

The second shot misses by an inch, but Red gets off a third before Sylvain can maneuver out of range. That one nails Sylvain in his left side. 

It’s a deep knife wound and the cauterization all wrapped up in one. Sylvain grits his teeth against a cry of pain. His eyes water. The landspeeder swerves as he fights to stay focused. 

He can hear Red laughing at him.

There’s the old man ahead at the main gate. Solon or whoever. Veiny asshole. Anna’s body is lying in a heap on the ground. Sylvain’s muscles tense as he comes up fast on the entrance, if this guy pulls out a weapon too then Sylvain is as good as cornered—

The old man simply steps aside with a smile. 

Sylvain understands it’s only so they can play cat-and-mouse for a while longer. He doesn’t care; he hurtles through the opening.

East is Ignatz’s cottage. Sylvain tears down the road going west. It’s paved dirt and gravel, tall fields of grass growing wild along both sides of the roadway. 

Breathing without a helmet at this speed is difficult. The wind whips past his bare face. He has to steer with his left hand so he can keep the right one pressed against his torso. The smell of burnt flesh is nauseating. His crest lights up the wound. This blood that he’s gone his whole life hating and now he just wants it to hurry the fuck up.

Soon enough he hears the roar of spacecraft engines. Over his shoulder he spots the auxiliary ship flying low, gaining on him, killing his head start stupidly fast. 

Sylvain pushes the landspeeder harder. She shudders under him, protesting. 

Then he checks over his shoulder a second time and this is when he takes stock of the cannon mounted to the ship’s hull.

Sylvain narrowly manages to avoid snapping his fucking neck as he dives out of the landspeeder. He hits the grassy dirt shoulder-first, tucking and rolling. The cannon fires a second later. The landspeeder smashes off the side of the road and into the field.

Sylvain blacks out for a couple seconds. When he comes back, everything hurts even worse than before. He rolls onto his back. Smoke rises against the blue sky, transforming it into a violet-red omen. 

He can tell right away that his right arm is broken. The bone moves and shifts excruciatingly under his skin. He’s dizzy and roughly ten seconds away from puking. 

The auxiliary ship sails past him and the scorched ruins of the landspeeder. It lands a hundred yards away. 

Red shoots him again as she and the old man approach from up the road. Sylvain is so prepared for another laser that it takes a moment for him to realize he’s been hit with something else. 

He stares at the needle dart sticking out of his shoulder. And just like that his motor functions are offline.

That’s not the only thing that gets snuffed out. Sylvain can’t feel his crest anymore. The inside of his mouth tastes bitter with fear. He lies there, his heart racing, paralyzed. 

Two shadows stand above him. The old man is still smiling. Red zeroes in on Sylvain’s arm like a shark scenting blood. She nudges it with her boot, then carefully grinds against the break. 

Sylvain makes a noise between a scream and a moan. Then a blunt pain slams against the side of his skull, and he’s out. 

-

“Kings?”

“Go fish,” says Dimitri.

Felix scowls. “Fine.”

He draws a new card from the pile. His hair has grown long again, past his shoulders. The light flickers above the table, making the shadows dance hypnotically across his cold, lovely face. The table itself rocks slowly, as if riding a wave.

It’s Dimitri’s turn next. He turns towards Sylvain with a pink hole in his skull.

“Sylvain,” he says kindly. “Do you have any eyes?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sylvain says. “Right here.”

He has to gouge his thumb all the way back, grinding it deeper and deeper until he can curl it behind his retina and pry the eyeball forward. The mess of his eye falls out with a wet pop.

It’s tough to get a grip on it. Small, slippery thing like a sea pearl. He pulls against the optic nerve until the dangling muscle snaps. 

“There you go,” Sylvain says, and drops the eyeball into Dimitri’s extended palm, covered in blood and fat. 

“Thank you,” Dimitri says. He uses his free hand to hold his eyelid and the rest of the pulpy tissue in place as he pushes his new eye into his empty socket. 

Sylvain can only see the left half of Dimitri now, smiling and young and whole. “Got anything for me?” he asks Felix.

Felix glances down at his cards. “What do you want?”

Sylvain opens his mouth. Water dribbles out. He coughs and tries again. Even more water pours from his mouth.

It comes out of him in broken spurts like a bad faucet, salty and heavy from the ocean. He can’t move. His legs are gone. He looks down at himself and sees a writhing, grotesque mass like the bottom half of a giant squid—

Felix is in front of him. He grips Sylvain by the chin, his gaze luminous and clear. Then he strikes Sylvain hard across the face.

Sylvain gasps. His lungs inflate with sweet, delicious air. 

“Wake up, Sylvain,” Felix says gently, as he draws his hand back again.

-

The second strike whips Sylvain’s entire body to the left. He meets resistance; sags limply. He’s strapped down against a surface. Something like a table. Restraints around his ankles, thighs, wrists, elbows. The right half of his face tingles from repeated abuse. Sylvain groans softly. 

“There you are.”

Sylvain opens his eyes. The lights are too strong. Head’s still woozy. Arm’s fucked up and battered, but the pain feels blurry.

The woman’s smile is cloying. Her rack is huge. What, like Sylvain is just supposed to not notice?

“Who could’ve imagined,” Cornelia murmurs, “that when I cast out my net, I would haul in a lost little Gautier.” 

She traces a finger down Sylvain’s bruised cheek and continues, “Gasping and squirming on my shipdeck.” 

“Piss poor prize c’mpared t’a Blaiddyd,” Sylvain slurs.

He sees the confirmation written all over her cruel face. The way her lips twist into a sneer. Sylvain doesn’t know where he is, but at least he knows that. The others aren’t here with him. Ashe rabbited. Best pilot Sylvain’s ever known. 

Fuck you, Sylvain thinks with delirious satisfaction. Fuck you, you don’t get them. You get me instead, and you’re gonna fucking _hate_ me.

She slaps him again. Sylvain grunts, tasting copper. He tries to spit at her, but he’s still pretty out of it. The blood and saliva merely drool out of his mouth. 

Cornelia wipes at Sylvain’s sloppy chin as if he’s her young infant. His stomach clenches with drugged fear and disgust.

“That may be true, dear,” Cornelia says, the syrup evaporating from her voice, “but I’m certain I can find some other use for you.”

Her thumb comes away stained with Sylvain’s blood. She licks and sucks it clean like a nectar. 

Sylvain laughs, soundless, and gets ready for it to hurt.


	12. an instinct to live

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This does not go great for Sylvain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: torture (electrocution, drugs, caning, waterboarding), a rape threat, animal injury and death, a racial slur in reference to claude, more violence

When Sylvain was sixteen, he busted up his nose in an accident. 

Officially, he wasn’t drunk. He was in the middle of affluent horse country, and the roads went winding through large acres of private estates. The deer came out of nowhere. 

Its body hit the right front edge. The sound was unforgettable, a deep cracking _thud_. The deer bounced up the hood, smashing against the windshield. Then it vanished in the darkness. 

Sylvain pulled the car over. Vintage make and model. Fur and meat streaked across the destroyed front bumper. 

His breath came out in quick, panicked, visible puffs. It was snowing outside. Between the alcohol and the endorphins, he could hardly feel anything.

The deer was a young doe. Graceful neck, no antlers, and she wasn’t dead yet. That was an unsolicited miracle, given how fast Sylvain had been going. She’d tried to keep running, only to roll herself into a ditch. Now she was trapped on her side. Most likely her back was broken. She suffered noisily, little horrible bleats of pain. 

Sylvain threw up onto the side of the road. His head was spinning.

He couldn’t leave her, dying alone. He had to go down there. He had to try to fix her somehow. Wasn’t that what a person should try to do: fix the thing they broke? Her front legs kept scrambling distressingly in the air, kicking up snow. Her back legs were mangled. The moon caught the white flash of exposed bone.

Sylvain sat in the empty road. Right outside the starburst of glass, illuminated by a hanging headlight. The bulb flickered off and back on intermittently. Blood crusted Sylvain’s chin and t-shirt collar. 

At some point he called his father. Why had he done that? He didn’t even remember making the call until the old man showed up minutes or hours later. His hovercraft landed. Smoothest turbines on the market. Soundless as a reaper. 

The deer was quiet, having grown tired. As his father approached, Sylvain stumbled back up to his feet. 

“Is it still alive?” his father said. 

“Yes sir,” Sylvain said.

His father circled the car first, inspecting the damage. His expression was obscured but Sylvain always knew what his anger looked like. It had the explosive range of shrapnel. You’d be spitting out metal splinters for the rest of your life. 

He joined Sylvain at the mouth of the ditch, grinding over shattered glass. He examined the deer for one dispassionate moment. Then he ordered Sylvain, “Look at me,” and Sylvain did. 

He took Sylvain’s head in both hands, and Sylvain steeled himself. 

“Deep breath in,” his father said.

Sylvain released the breath choppily as his father reset his fractured nose with a sickening crunch. Hot pain pulsed from the center of Sylvain’s face. His father didn’t let go. He held Sylvain with an iron grip.

“Straighten yourself out,” his father said. “I won’t tolerate another miserable failure for a son.”

He left Sylvain and returned to his hovercraft. Sylvain looked back into the ditch. His nose throbbed, but he didn’t touch it. If his stomach wasn’t empty he might’ve vomited again. The blood in his throat felt like a sludge. The deer stared up at Sylvain with one large, liquid brown eye, gleaming in the moonlight. 

His father came back. He placed a hunting rifle in Sylvain’s hands.

You remember all sorts of weird stuff when you’re trying to lure your own brain away. 

-

They toss Sylvain inside a cell to heal. He’s fed and cleaned on a schedule. If he doesn’t eat, they knock him out and he wakes up with a feeding tube up his nose. If he doesn’t wash himself, they strip him and blast him with water. 

Red’s name is Kronya. Sylvain grew up around people like her. She’s always the one holding the hose. 

The food is drugged. Turns him into a slow, weak, stupid pet. He wakes up and his arm has been professionally splinted. He wakes up and there’s a metal collar around his neck. He wakes up and they’ve been coming in and taking blood. The skin around his veins bruises vivid purple.

He wakes up and there’s no table this time. He’s suspended from the ceiling, swinging gently from a chain like a slab of meat in a locker. Naked except for his underwear and the collar. His wrists are bound above his head; his ankles are strapped together too. He can barely reach the floor with his toes. The position forces too much pressure onto his mending right arm.

And he feels it. The spasm of pain and discomfort is the first thing he’s been able to feel clearly. 

The white room is populated by a handful of Agarthan lab techs. Kronya and her small security team. Unfamiliar equipment and chemical analyzers along the walls. Sheets of plastic have been laid out across the floor below him.

Fear and adrenaline flood Sylvain’s system. 

The old man, Solon, hovers next to a medical instrument tray. He speaks into a voice recorder. “Day one,” he says. “Electrical administration test.”

Cornelia’s here too, observing. Sylvain summons up some attitude. 

“You like to watch?” he says.

One of the lab techs takes the opportunity to grip Sylvain’s jaw, forcing open Sylvain’s mouth in order to shove a mouthguard inside. 

Cornelia approaches with a smile. Her hand caresses up Sylvain’s bare thigh. He can’t help his own flinch.

“Can you feel the sedatives wearing off, dear?” Cornelia pats his flank. “That means you’re free to show me your most authentic reaction.”

She steps back, and Solon takes her place, wearing a pair of white rubber gloves. There’s a stun baton in his hands. Nasty high-tech cattle prod.

Sylvain’s breathing quickens. He clenches his teeth in anticipation.

He holds out for a while. Solon raises and reduces the power and length of each shock methodically. Subject shows some initial resistance to the muscular freezing effects of electrocution. Subject’s rapid healing response begins to stall out at 40 mA. Subject appears to be in severe pain. 

No shit subject’s in severe pain. Sylvain thrashes from each press of the baton against his abdomen. His arms pull against the restraints and it feels like he’s breaking the bone all over again. 

A three second shock holds him for years. Each current courses through his body, groundswells of white-hot pain. His heart is about to explode out of his ribcage. His muscles contract and convulse. Then the current fizzles out and he goes slack, hanging there like dead weight, sucking in broken gasps of air. 

Solon changes up the setting again. He rakes the prongs down Sylvain’s chest. 

Sylvain didn’t survive all those years in that house with that family so he could be the kind of person who would mistake pride for preservation. In the end he makes the sounds he knows Cornelia wants to hear. 

-

“Nowadays we are able to grow meat in a lab. All it takes is harvesting the stem cells from a tissue sample, seeding and culturing them, and expanding them into muscle fibres. Industrial production estimates get cheaper and cheaper each year. Someday Galatea may even be able to feed itself. 

“But you understand what I’m saying, don’t you? It begins with that initial sample. You need the live animal. 

“There are no synthetic crests without first harvesting the real thing. And you can’t perfect a formula without understanding what it is you’re imitating. What conditions trigger the elevated strength? How long does it take to replace and recover from a liter of blood lost? A liter and a half? What are the limits to the enhanced healing? Surely if you held one of the Goddess’s blessed ones underwater, they’d succumb and drown as fast as any other man. 

“The princeling remained in our care for a number of years. Such a pity to lose him. A good source of data, that one. An eye won’t regenerate, and isn’t that useful to know.

“The young Ordelia girl as well, yes. The brood of von Hresvelgs. What is research without replication?

“Now bite down, dear.”

-

Torture is painful and worst of all it’s boring. You wake up, you get electrocuted, you’re tossed back inside your cell, you wake up, you get electrocuted even worse, you piss yourself, you’re tossed back inside your cell. 

There’s no interrogation. There’s nothing Sylvain can say to get out of it. The only question Cornelia ever asks is on the day she interrupts Sylvain’s semi-regular hosing in the gang shower. She pushes past Kronya. Her heels splash through puddles of cold water. Sylvain is already on his knees, shivering, numb. He only looks up when she digs her nails into his throat and shakes him, fury in her face. 

“You delivered him to that Riegan _mutt_?”

She throws him back down. Sylvain catches himself against the tiled floor, coughing.

“Who’s that?” he croaks. “Sounds hot.”

He wakes up. He gets electrocuted. He’s tossed back inside his cell.

Sylvain is allowed to recover between sessions. The inflamed burn marks fade across his torso and thighs. Sensation returns to his deadened right arm. He slobbers all over himself until he can move his jaw and tongue properly again. They check on his progress and take notes. He’s like a rare and exotic zoo animal. 

They dose him, too: three times a day, whatever counts as a day anymore. Once in the food, twice through the neck. It’s more than sedatives. There’s something in the cocktail barricading Sylvain from full access to his crest. He tests this out by punching the wall a few times and injuring his hand instead of the plaster. 

He stares at his knuckles, bruised and swelling. He touches the scraped skin of his ring and pinky fingers.

Something about it feels good. A moment of bodily autonomy. Pain delivered himself. 

He keeps punching until they come into his cell and hold him down against the floor and stick another needle through the slot in the back of his collar.

He wakes up. His neck throbs. His hand has been bandaged. His forearms are bound together tightly, strapped against his chest. New safety padding has been installed to the walls. 

-

“—should’ve listened to me and tried harder to run down the Fraldarius brat.”

“He was already out of our reach by the time we secured the Gautier. A man who chases two rabbits catches neither.”

“If the Leicester fleet consolidates with Fraldarius senior, we stand to lose Faerghus—”

“Or we stand to gain Leicester. Don’t be so histrionic in front of our guest.”

He wakes up. Kronya looks like someone pissed in her morning coffee.

Solon smiles at Sylvain. “We may be able to trim some extra meat off this one.”

-

A running list of topics that keep Sylvain from losing his fucking mind:

1) His girl. He misses his girl. 

2) Duscur had followed an entirely different solar calendar from Fódlan. This meant Dedue effectively had two different dates of birth. Each year he took the passenger shuttle and spent the Duscurian date on Kleiman. For the most recent birthday, he’d invited Mercedes to go with him. Then everyone regrouped on Garreg Mach so Dedue could turn twenty-eight a second time. He requested that they go fishing as a crew to celebrate. Sylvain must’ve hooked a psycho killer mutant fish, it was fighting him like mad, and when Ashe tried to help Sylvain land it, it pulled them both straight into the water. Annette laughed so hard she—by her own admission—peed herself a little.

3) If Leicester is assembling its fleet, then congratulations are in order to Claude von Riegan. Congratulations, Claude von Riegan.

4) “You never answered the question yourself,” Sylvain said.

Both of them were lying on their sides. He wasn’t sure if Felix was still awake until Felix peeked his eyes open. Sylvain had already been looking, mostly at Felix’s eyelashes and lips. They were very close to each other. The room was quiet, dark except for the _Scylla_ ’s blue strip lighting that backlit Felix’s face. 

All of a sudden Felix seemed to get embarrassed, and he closed his eyes again. “Learn to read between the lines,” he said.

“I’m illiterate,” Sylvain said. “Throw me a bone, baby.”

“I told you not to call me that.”

So Sylvain said, “Felix.” He saw Felix’s mouth curl up in the bluish darkness, and said it again: “Felix, Felix, Felix.”

-

Cornelia’s next visit, she’s in another foul mood. Civil war not going too well for you anymore? Is Fraldarius harshing your galactic domination vision board?

She takes the stun baton herself. Then she orders the lab techs to cut the underwear off Sylvain’s body, and Sylvain loses his shit.

The lab tech who tries to insert Sylvain’s mouthguard almost loses his fingers. Sylvain’s teeth sink in deep enough to hit bone. If that stun baton comes any fucking closer he doesn’t know what else he’ll do. 

The security team descends on him immediately. Someone has to punch Sylvain in the head before he lets go, taking a disgusting mouthful of skin and blood with him. He digs into whatever reservoir of strength he has left and kicks another guy in the face. Nose blood spurts over Sylvain’s legs.

The scuffle is over in a matter of minutes. It isn’t worth it. 

When Kronya is done caning Sylvain’s lower back and ass raw, Cornelia makes a low “tsk” noise to call off her dog. She circles Sylvain, not yet activating the baton. 

Blood trickles sluggishly down the welts on Sylvain’s back, splattering the plastic floor covering. He blinks the sweat out of his eyes. His hair is dripping. His throat is in shreds.

He needs to get himself back under control or he’s in fucking trouble. He needs to find something else to focus on. He’s terrified of how he feels right now. Engulfed by the receding wave of pain and scared out of his mind over what’s coming next. Those last few strikes, it’d felt like any single one of them could’ve punctured the swelling balloon of exhaustion and powerlessness and humiliation inside him and he would’ve broken down crying. 

Cornelia comes to a stop in front of Sylvain, and reaches up. Sylvain jerks back, but can’t get far. She strokes the cold length of the stun baton down the side of Sylvain’s face. 

“Now,” she says, patient and forgiving, “I can either shock you with one end, or fuck you with the other.”

Sylvain freezes. His chest heaves. 

“Oh, poor thing,” Cornelia soothes, delighted. “Don’t cry.”

The baton drags across Sylvain’s sticky cheek, collecting sweat and tears. The prongs come too close to his eyes. His stomach roils. Maybe if he pukes hard enough, Cornelia will slip in the puddle of his vomit and drown.

“Shall I take a guess as to which one you’d prefer?” she asks.

Sylvain can’t move or shake his head. His breath is wild and shallow. 

“No? Tell me yourself, then.”

“Shock me,” Sylvain says hoarsely. 

Cornelia clicks her tongue. “After all that naughty behavior, I’m not sure you deserve it.”

He hates himself for the sound he makes. “Please do it.”

“Say please, Cornelia, electrocute my balls.”

Sylvain sucks it up and looks at her and begs, “Please, Miss Cornelia, will you please electrocute my balls.”

“Well, aren’t you sweet,” Cornelia says. 

-

Laughter downstairs. Light streams in through a window. Sylvain curls his fingers, stroking through dark hair that’s almost blue, warmed by the sun.

He wakes up.

-

“You got a plan here, baby brother?” asks Miklan.

If Sylvain were capable of lifting his head, he would’ve bashed it against the floor to get out of this moment. 

“You could steal the keycard off a lab tech. Maybe the one whose hand you mauled. I bet he drops shit all the time now.”

The agony radiating from his backside and genitals is so intense it pierces through the drug haze. His arms remain bound across his chest.

“So use your feet or mouth. Offer to suck his cock.”

There are cameras in the cell. 

“And? What’s got you acting so shy all of a sudden?”

Say he gets out of the cell through sheer cocksucking talent. He has no sense of layout. No clue what’s beyond these four walls except another room where he gets strung up like livestock. He can’t fight. He can’t pilot. He can’t even stand. It’s a waiting game now.

“It’s always like this with you,” Miklan sneers. Well now he sounds like dad. “No follow through.”

He killed Miklan, didn’t he? How’s that for follow through.

“What are you waiting for? Nobody’s coming. Dedue’s going to be a great single mom, and your boyfriend got his boyfriend back.”

Sylvain presses his forehead to the floor. His body aches all the way through, like the hurt is atomic. He’s made from it. 

“Or are you waiting for me? ‘Cause I’m waiting for you, princess.” Miklan grips Sylvain by the hair and jerks his face up. Lightning and hellfire crown Miklan’s head. “I’m saving a spot at the table for you.”

He lets go. “Who knows,” he says. “Maybe they’ll finish the job you and I started together.”

-

She hadn’t made it easy for him. The deer, he means. She was calm up until the moment Sylvain sighted-in the rifle; then she started bleating and screaming, a final paroxysm of desperation. It took three shots in total. The first two clipped her in the side of the head. It wasn’t that Sylvain’s hands were unsteady. She was moving and struggling too much. She could sense death coming for her, and although she was already far past saving, she had an instinct to live. The world had run her into a ditch and even so, she wanted to stay a part of it. She didn’t know how to do anything else. 

-

Sylvain wakes up lashed flat across a wooden bench, sloped so that his head rests below his feet. Lying on his back, which aggravates the caning scars. And he’s clothed! Old man Solon is spicing up the routine today. 

He’s still kind of stoned. Usually they like him lucid in the torture dungeon, but lately the lab techs have been playing around with his dosage trying to account for his increased tolerance. 

“Where’s Cornelia?” he says, words running together. “Haven’t seen her lately.”

Solon is preferable ‘cause he’s not a sexual fucking sadist with a mommy complex. Instead he’s a sick smiley asshole in a lab coat. Bloodsport in the costume of science. 

“She’s tending to other matters,” Solon says. At this angle Sylvain can’t see him or what he’s doing. He hears the slosh of water. 

Fear seeps through Sylvain, fuzzy and far away. Not the real feeling itself, but the shadow of it on a wall. 

He knows what this position means. He saw how Dimitri reacted to the bathtub. 

“I trust my presence is enough incentive for you to put your best foot forward today,” Solon continues.

Miklan crouches next to Sylvain’s head. He’s rarely in Sylvain’s direct line of sight. Just a presence looming over him, standing at the mouth of a deep, cold well.

“Deep breath in, baby brother.”

Solon reappears. He places a wet towel over Sylvain’s face. 

Now it’s real. Sylvain balls his hands into fists. He twists against the restraints, moving his head back and forth, trying to fight his way off the bench. Panic only makes the towel glue more tightly over his nose and mouth. The collar around his neck is crushing. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to feel this again. 

The stream of water never comes. 

Instead, the white room turns red behind the towel.

The energy around Sylvain shifts; heightens. A buzz of urgency. Indistinct chatter over the two-way radio. Sylvain lies there, blinded and immobile, trying to slow and regulate his breathing. 

Then there’s Solon again, sharply: “Technicians with me. Kronya, guard the subject.”

Sylvain keeps counting under the towel: three in, six out.

-

He is not drowning. He’s not even close to drowning. It’s a hot towel. It’s no different from a barbershop. He’s getting shaved. There’s water in his nasal cavity and throat. The towel clamps down around his head, gradually smothering him. Miklan’s giant hand covering his face. 

Don’t go there. Go somewhere else. Remember the time a bird flew aboard the _Scylla_ but nobody on the crew noticed until they’d already left atmo? And everyone chased it around the cargo bay for hours? It finally landed, but only because it was coming down with a case of space sickness, and died a few days later? Ashe cried. Sylvain keeps making Ashe cry.

One of Kronya’s guys is pacing. He carries more of his weight in one foot than the other. Big thump, little thump. Big thump, little thump. Big thump. 

The pacing stops. 

Something else happens. 

It goes from dead silence to madness in a span of ten seconds. Some kind of smoke grenade hits the room. Sylvain can smell it through the towel: fireworks and magnesium. 

Shots ring out. Kronya’s shouting at her guys, pissed. They stop firing at nothing. They listen, tense and on high alert. A pack of carnivores cornered by something larger.

There’s a repulsive snap followed by a thud, like a body hitting the floor.

Five guys on Kronya’s security team including herself. Someone mutters, “Drakos?”

A wet gurgle, another thud, then Kronya says, “Southwest corner—”

The next shots come from a different weapon. Two thuds in quick succession. Kronya finally gets her opponent’s position. The smell of blood overtakes the smell of smoke. The greasy charcoal stench of a laser cooking human skin. The attacker grunts through the pain; keeps coming; makes heavy impact. 

Medical instruments clatter and break as bodies crash into the tray. Kronya says, with a vicious laugh of recognition, “I’ve been _looking_ for you.”

The fight travels around the room, smashing against the walls, long and brutal. Lab equipment shatters. The meaty sound of a blow landing to the chest. The thinner smack of a fist blocked against the flat of a palm. The air crackles, a crest being triggered—then the fifth thud. 

They must have landed on the floor. Something sharp punctures something soft.

Kronya makes a choked noise. It’s quieter now, both of them struggling and straining against each other, breathing hard.

Then the laser gun goes off again. 

A sudden stillness blankets the room. Sylvain can only hear his own crazed survival instinct: the hammer of his heart, the ragged pants for air. 

The towel is whipped off his head. Sylvain coughs and gags. His eyes adjust. The emergency alarm washes the room in red light. The smoke grenade has left behind a gray fog.

He gazes into the face above him, clear as the sky. Looking so dirty, and so hot. 

“It’s you,” Sylvain says. 

-

If this is another hallucination, it’s one of his brain’s nicer gifts to himself. 

Felix leans over Sylvain, hands everywhere, removing the straps around his right elbow and wrist first. Sylvain uses that freed arm to reach up. He touches a loose piece of Felix’s hair. 

“You didn’t have to come,” he says. 

Felix’s face does fifty different things in reaction to that. He’s always so interesting to look at. He unbinds the rest of Sylvain’s body, then maneuvers Sylvain upright.

“You’re hurt,” Felix spits it out like it’s hard for him to say otherwise. “What did they give you?”

Sylvain shrugs, smiling dopily. It’s cute that Felix cares. 

“Can you stand?”

Felix looks like he really needs Sylvain to say yes, so Sylvain nods. He grips the bench’s edge to steady himself and looks around the room at the five bodies on the floor. Two shot in the head; one with a cut throat. Sylvain can’t see enough of Drakos to tell what Felix did to him. 

“I have Gautier in possession,” Felix says. There’s a black earpiece in his right ear. “He’s been drugged. We’re coming back to the hangar. Is Corridor B clear?”

Blood pools thick and dark from Kronya’s gut. Her own laser gun has burned a crater from the underside of her jaw, up through the top of her skull. 

“Where’s Cornelia?”

Now Felix is talking to Sylvain.

“She’s not here,” Sylvain says, and Kronya is dead. The knowledge settles spitefully inside him. 

Felix repeats over the comm link, “No sign of Cornelia.” 

He listens to a response that makes him unhappy, jaw flexing. Then all of his attention is back on Sylvain again. The entire raw density of it. 

Five bodies on the floor and who knows how many more outside. Felix’s tactical vest is splashed with blood. Blood drips from a cut bisecting his eyebrow; drips from his Zolton. Shards of glass in his hair. His shoulders are rigid, moving with every harsh, controlled breath. The left shoulder is injured; the black skinsuit is torn, the flesh beneath it scorched and blistered. He came through fire and brimstone. It’s him.

“We have to go,” Felix says lowly. “I need you to walk.”

But he wraps Sylvain’s arm around his neck, and helps carry him to his feet. 

-

Sylvain is not in a torture dungeon, he is on a torture spaceship with advanced stealth technology. Apparently having Dimitri stolen from under their noses made the Agarthans rethink their storage options. Sylvain wasn’t easy to find.

They run into the remnants of another security team. Four assailants total. Felix shoves Sylvain off his shoulder, out of the way behind himself.

“Corridor B is _not clear_ ,” Felix barks into the comm.

They come at Felix in pairs down the narrow hallway. One of them is much larger. The other one, regular-sized, takes aim first. Felix knocks away the guy’s pistol before the round discharges, then activates his crest and headbutts him. Tosses him bodily aside and faces down the goliath.

Felix moves like a panther: feline agility and primal strength. Meanwhile Goliath is built like a heavyweight. Five tons of power behind each swing. Most of them miss, Felix is too fast, except he can’t get close enough with his knife either. Goliath’s grizzly face splits into a ruthless grin. Sylvain stands there, a useless liability, watching Felix lose inch after inch of ground. 

Goliath catches Felix’s next roundhouse kick. Felix doesn’t try to twist out of the hold. Instead he snakes his foot around Goliath and pulls him in. Then Felix jumps up, grabs Goliath’s head, and crushes a knee into his face. 

Goliath lets go, doubled over. Felix is panting audibly. He flips his knife, reverse grip, and stabs the blade down into the back of Goliath’s thick neck. 

The giant falls.

The regular-sized guy Felix headbutted earlier is staggering back to his feet, ready for round two. Felix is already occupied, getting double-teamed by the last pair of assailants.

Sylvain tackles Regular Guy without a second thought.

This does not go great for Sylvain. 

Regular Guy probably has a skull fracture but Sylvain is coming off a shitload of sedatives so they’re more or less evenly matched. They’re on the ground, locked against each other, Regular Guy on top, and Felix is yelling, yelling get the _fuck_ up, Sylvain. 

Sylvain pushes and scratches at Regular Guy’s face, his palm mashing against cheekbone and brow ridge. He ducks away from the muzzle of the gun right before it blows a hole in the floor far too close to Sylvain’s head.

Another shot, a spray of blood. Regular Guy sags, lifeless.

Time speeds back up. Felix wrenches the body off of Sylvain. He drags Sylvain back up by the front of his shirt like he weighs nothing. The rest of the corridor is motionless. 

“Do you have any idea,” Felix says. He cuts himself off with a sound of explosive frustration.

“You left yourself open,” Sylvain tries, winded and half-deaf, getting his footing back.

“I saw him.”

“I didn’t know that,” Sylvain says. “I was helping.”

Felix does not like that answer. “You’re the most reckless and infuriating person I’ve ever met. You think that helps me?”

“Felix, I like our sexy high-tension arguments too, but I don’t think now’s the time—”

“Shut up,” Felix snarls. His face is alive with the same kind of anger that sleeps curled at the foot of Felix’s fear to protect it. 

Confronted with that face, Sylvain has nothing to say. 

“You don’t help me by dying,” Felix says. “I don’t need that from you.”

Felix releases Sylvain. Sylvain doesn’t budge. He doesn’t know if they’re in a place with each other (both in the emotional and metaphysical sense) where he can go around cupping Felix’s cheek with an audience of four incapacitated bodies. He does it anyway, thumbing at the sheen of sweat and grime. Felix covers Sylvain’s hand and holds it there. 

If it had been Sylvain in that position, receiving Ashe when he came back alone. If Sylvain had walked into a room to find Felix tied down and ready to be drowned. 

Then Felix’s expression goes dark. His other hand goes to his earpiece.

“Where’s Dimitri?” Felix demands. “Which room?”

“Wait,” Sylvain says, “Dimitri’s here too?” 

-

Dimitri is here too. They discover him in the escape pod bay, cloaked by the same red emergency light. He’s banging his large fists against the hatch to one of the pods. 

“What are you doing,” Felix says as Dimitri throws himself against an unmoving mountain. 

“Help or stay out of my way,” Dimitri says. He backs up and slams his shoulder into the hatch again with a resounding _boom_.

On the other side of the hatch door window: it’s Solon.

Bile rises to Sylvain’s throat. A bucket of cold water to the face. 

“There’s always an external launch control,” he tells Felix. 

Felix spots the panel on the wall opposite from the pods. “Over there.” 

_Boom_. 

One of the surviving lab techs is inside with Solon, shakily fussing with the settings. Those pods are the easiest things to fly in the world. In another minute Dimitri will lose them. Sylvain can’t access the controls without the right identification and his personal fuel tank is reading in at a big fat zero. All of his energy is being funneled into staying on his feet. 

Felix locates the nearest dead lab tech and searches her for her keycard. Sylvain can tell Felix is running low on gas too. His protectiveness is being yanked in a dozen directions.

Dimitri grunts and continues trying to break in, bare-knuckled and relentless. The air tastes like ozone from repeated crest activation. 

_Boom._

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Felix grinds out, “you stupid beast, _Dimitri_.”

“You and that woman,” Dimitri says, “sold out our homeland, sowed unthinkable suffering, and now you believe you can escape me?”

Dimitri’s fist pounds against the glass right in front of Solon’s face. Solon doesn’t react except to smile. 

He isn’t looking at Dimitri. He’s looking straight at Sylvain. 

Solon reaches a hand into his lab coat. He takes out a small radio transmitter.

Sylvain doesn’t recognize it, but his stomach lurches anyway. _Boom._

“Felix,” he mutters anxiously.

Solon’s thumb comes down on the trigger—

—the back of Sylvain’s neck stings.

Felix has the keycard. Sylvain doesn’t hear what he says. 

_Boom_. 

He folds over. His ears ring. Something boils through him, black and bloody. Something’s ripping him apart and swallowing the pieces whole and licking its chops for more. His insides are on fire, Goddess, oh Seiros, the holy fucking mother, nothing has ever hurt this badly. 

His mind is howling as it gets thrown down below. His crest comes roaring back to life through his veins. 

The barricade lifts. 

A monster wraps its hands around Felix’s throat, lifts him off the floor, and smashes him into the wall. The control panel sparks and goes dead.

Felix chokes and fights and struggles wide-eyed against the pressure on his windpipe. Reflexive skill and training take over. He grabs both of its wrists and swings his legs up, kicking it hard in the stomach.

The monster staggers back. Shakes off the impact. 

_Boom._

“Sylvain.” 

Felix sounds unsurprisingly like a person who has just been strangled. Hot emotion in his face, underneath the cold assessment and resolve.

It’s dark and wet in here, down in the frothing pit of rage and violence and fear. Up on the surface, the monster lunges again. This time Felix dodges, still wobbly on his feet.

It whirls around to follow, teeth bared, its blood electrifying the air. Felix watches it warily with his knife ready in his hand. The lines of his body are exhausted and tense. 

“Whatever this is, you need to get yourself back under control,” Felix rasps out. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

It hurts already. Its maw wide open, screaming. It wants to hurt something back. 

Felix blocks the next attack. His knife comes around in a swift arc. It raises an arm defensively—a mistake. The blade should slice through its brachial artery; it somehow misses by half an inch instead. 

The pain feels like nothing. It keeps stalking forward, into the red world. It’s on fire inside, pain on top of pain, incinerating its bones. Why shouldn’t everything else be on fire too? 

“Sylvain,” Felix says, evading blow after blow until one glances off his bad shoulder. “ _Sylvain_!”

He slashes again with the knife. A shallow gash rips across its lower abdomen.

Every one of these punches is being pulled.

Its neck throbs. It falls back a pace, confused, losing its stance. Down below, something claws at the stone walls, trying to climb back up. 

From behind, a muscular arm hooks under its jaw.

Hi, Dimitri.

The monster slams its head back, listening to the satisfying crack. They fall backwards to the floor. Dimitri growls like an animal beneath its weight but doesn’t let go. He squeezes with his bicep. His legs wrap around to pin its chest in place. 

Felix climbs on top, straddling its waist, grabbing its neck, digging at the thick metal collar. 

“Sylvain,” Felix says. He keeps saying that. “Look at me, Sylvain.”

He—it—thrashes harder. It tries to pry Felix’s hands off. When it—he—can’t, he switches tactics and applies pressure, crushing Felix’s fingers. Felix cries out. Dimitri’s grip tightens.

“You fucking _idiot_ , look at me and fight it. _Look_ at me. Come back.”

Come back, transmitting into the dirt.

Come back, echoing a mile down a watery hole in the ground. 

His vision goes spotty and blurred. 

Remember the time with the bird? And he squeezed it until its little red head popped off? Or was that the brother? No, he shot the brother. He shot the deer too. She died in a ditch under a smoking horizon. Every man with a name and a pack of crushed cigarettes. Every bullet that missed its mark and let him crawl away alive while Miklan bled out from the shrapnel and his synthetic fuck-you poison. 

Starboy. Wardog. Man’s best weapon. This fucking blood bag. Someone should really put him down. 

Yet when Sylvain looked up from the bottom of the well, he was afraid to die. He wanted to be found. He wanted to live. 

Every single time he got as far as one foot in the ground, he’d wanted to live. He’d wanted the sun and the wind and the sky on his face. 

Come back to me. I’m up here.

Sylvain folds his hands over Felix’s and _pulls_. The crackling gleam of Felix’s crest joins with Sylvain’s. The collar snaps off, and he wakes up.

-

The world is still red. The emergency light is still going. The escape pod is gone. Sylvain’s future king has him in a rear chokehold. 

Dimitri eases up without fully unlocking his legs from around Sylvain’s torso. Felix throws aside the collar with a look of disgust, rolls off of Sylvain, and collapses onto the floor. Three different patterns of loud, exerted breathing gradually sync up with each other. They lie there, and nobody is dead, and the only thing that Sylvain has broken today is a hunk of metal and a couple of Felix’s fingers. 

“Your Highness,” Sylvain says eventually, because he should say something. He’s had all of five conversations with Dimitri before this moment and now his head is basically in Dimitri’s lap. 

“Sylvain,” Dimitri responds. The sound rumbles against Sylvain’s spine.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

Dimitri, who has expanded his personality 50% beyond broody revenge in the time that Sylvain’s been gone, says, “I don’t know you very well, but I’ll assume you weren’t behaving like yourself.”

“Thanks,” Sylvain says. His voice cracks. “Ah, Goddess. That was so fucked up.”

Felix rolls out his shoulder with a wince. “Solon got away.”

“Yes,” Dimitri says.

Sylvain feels like he just ate himself alive and spat himself back out: all the bones and gristle, only the bare essentials remaining. He adds, “I could’ve killed you both.”

“I could’ve killed you too,” Felix says. He sits up, examining his hands. He hisses painfully through his teeth. 

Then, as if sensing Sylvain’s gaze on him, Felix glances over his shoulder. 

“It’ll heal,” he says.

I won’t kill you, and you won’t let me die. We’ll pound on each other’s chests, pushing air and light back and forth straight into each other’s mouths. 

-

When they finally reach the hangar bay, a twenty-person special forces platoon is loading confiscated lab equipment and intelligence onto their dropship. Some surrendered lab techs sit cuffed next to the landing gear. Sylvain doesn’t recognize anyone except the tallest person on the team, outfitted in the same gear as everyone else but without the Goneril insignia. 

Dedue turns around and sees Sylvain too. His expression shifts like the earth rupturing into two.

He comes to meet them, first at a brisk walking pace, then jogging. Sylvain takes his left arm off Felix’s shoulders, his right arm off Dimitri’s, and falls into Dedue’s tight hug.

“Hey,” Sylvain says roughly. A tight knot grows in his throat. He realizes he’s about to cry. 

“Hello, captain,” Dedue says. He wraps his arms around Sylvain and uses one hand to cradle the back of Sylvain’s head.


	13. derdriu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone makes it to their destination.

The dropship’s maternal figure is a Goneril star destroyer with a medbay five times the size of the _Scylla_ ’s infirmary. The chief medical officer has her hands full tending to her own men, without the addition of a busted up triplet from Faerghus.

She examines Dimitri’s face: swollen from Sylvain’s handiwork, but nothing broken. He gets an ice pack before being pulled away for debriefing. She splints Felix’s fingers and treats his shoulder with a topical plasma. He’s dismissed for the same mission debrief. Felix doesn’t move. Felix says I’m staying. The platoon leader sounds like someone who’s been putting up with the same shit for a while now. Sergeant Fraldarius, all team members _and_ attached personnel are required to be debriefed. 

Sylvain checks out of the entire exchange until he hears Dedue say I am neither, I will stay. 

He’s sweating. Every muscle in his body is jittery. Scraped and twisted like catgut. It’s hitting him all at once. 

He asks to be restrained. Dedue doesn’t like this idea in the slightest. Dedue didn’t see what Sylvain became in the wash of that red room. 

It doesn’t matter anyway. The moment a pair of handcuffs actually appear, Sylvain is out. Hey, changed my mind, thanks but no thanks. His heart pounds. The cuffs go away. It keeps on pounding. Distantly he realizes that bondage in the bedroom is off the table for the foreseeable future too. 

Ms. Chief Medical Officer wants to stick a cannula in his arm. Her priority right now is helping him come down safely from the drugs. She talks him through it: diazepam, adjuncts for the withdrawal, and plain old electrolytes. He loses his composure, his heart’s pounding so fucking much. He knows what a fucking IV is. She takes the brunt of his tantrum with stoic calm. She says count backwards in threes from a hundred. I’ll count with you. Sylvain messes up at around sixty-one but by then his breathing has leveled back out. She sticks the needle in his arm and says try to get some rest. He feels bad for blowing up at her, so he lies back and closes his eyes. 

He opens them again some time later, soaked in even more sweat. The dream itself dissipates into nothing. It leaves an imprint in his brain like a hand digging through wet concrete: water, darkness, blood. 

So sleep isn’t in the cards either. Sylvain can smell himself. Salty and sour and pathetically afraid. 

Dedue shifts to announce his presence beside the bed, and asks would you like some water, captain?

Sylvain taps the IV line in his left forearm. I’m getting the good stuff right here.

In my experience, there’s value in going through the physical motions of hydrating.

Dedue helps Sylvain take small sips from a glass of water. It does feel better, cold and nourishing against the scratchy inside of his throat. Sylvain drinks, greedy and thankful. Says you should rest too.

Dedue says this is how I am choosing to rest.

The medbay provides minimal privacy. A white curtain sections his bed off from the others. The sweat cools on Sylvain’s skin. So catch me up on the last—

Six weeks.

Sylvain says yeah even though it’s the first time he’s hearing that number. Six weeks. 

Dedue is quiet, looking at Sylvain’s face. Then he says, we remain in possession of Ignatz’s painting.

Sylvain says no shit. We’re six weeks late? Is Leonie on a rampage?

She expressed her sympathy for our circumstances. She will nonetheless be taking the auction fees out of our original cut.

So that knocks us down to, what, four and a half percent?

Closer to four.

What’d you tell her?

I explained to her that we’d lost our rudder.

Sylvain croaks out something like rudder, huh. 

Dedue offers more water. Some of it spills down Sylvain’s front, he’s shaking all the way down to his individual molars. 

Dedue says I apologize. This is not the time to burden you with this information. 

Sylvain says no, it’s good. It’s good. Will you keep talking to me?

Dedue nods. After another moment he informs Sylvain that Ashe fell ill as soon as they reached Derdriu. A stress fever, Dedue suspects, though his recovery was fast. The Mercedes touch, Sylvain says, and Dedue says yes. Annette is off her crutches as well. She’s kept busy, tending to the ship. Dedue says you should know, captain, that the _Scylla_ ’s codex has been flagged by authorities in each sector. We’ve lost much of the anonymity we previously enjoyed. This has made many of our previous business partners somewhat gun-shy about dealing with us.

Sylvain doesn’t blame them. He’s impressed Leonie hasn’t totally hung them out to dry either.

We’ve repainted the hull with yellow, and are making edits to her shell. It’s our hope that she’ll pass decently for a Leicester merchant from afar. Senator Riegan is helping us procure the necessary papers.

Sylvain attempts to picture it. What about the interior? Same shade of blue?

Yes, Dedue says, still blue.

-

It’s a short journey back to Derdriu. Sylvain fades in and out. Ms. Chief Medical Officer is a field surgeon: lacerations, electrocution burns, a poorly healed arm, no sweat, but detoxification is tricky. Either Sylvain is vomiting out his insides while he’s awake, or he’s having delirious dreams about being eaten by insects. 

Sylvain isn’t always sure which one it is. In or out. What is or isn’t real. He can sense when there’s a body nearby or above. It’s the soldier left inside him. You come to recognize the feeling of someone taking watch. 

It’s the other details that throw him off. The back of a bandaged hand over his damp forehead. The same hand laid against his chest. 

At one point he imagines Felix resting in a chair, bathed in the same medbay light that makes Sylvain’s eyes hurt. His brow’s creased in unconscious distress. His head is tipped tiredly to one side. 

That’s why Sylvain can’t trust it. Felix wouldn’t be so careless to leave himself vulnerable. His pale throat freely bared. Purple strangulation bruises with the fingertips grouped together. How easy would it be for Sylvain to—

Except at the end of the day, Felix is stronger than him. Faster. Better trained. He’d never let Sylvain get so close a second time. He could have Sylvain dead on the floor in half a minute flat. 

There’s a comfort in the realization. If it comes to that, Felix will take care of it.

Reassured, he drifts off again.

-

It gets worse first, the tremors and the headaches and the body spasms. He sweats through the thin mattress. Then he gets the chills. Shivers so violently it’s like he’s been flayed of all warmth, tossed out naked in the tundra. He keeps waking up hyperventilating. An anxiety so big and abstract it’s impossible to contain. Miklan’s back, sitting at the foot of the bed. Reminiscing about their old man’s big speeches. _Who else but family is going to waste their time toughening you up,_ Miklan mimics nastily. He’s grinning at Sylvain because it’s only the two of them in the whole galaxy who really get it. Who else but family would do this to each other? He opens his mouth and spiders fall out. A black worm crawls out from his cheek and tunnels back under the skin. Fuck it feels like Sylvain’s going crazy. Is this real too? He says I’m sorry just in case it is. Says it like a thirty-year poison he brewed inside his own guts. If he doesn’t spit it out now who knows when it’ll finally kill him. And someone says back to him, you’re okay. You’re almost there.

-

The next time Sylvain wakes up, it’s a slow climb back into consciousness. He registers his surroundings in pieces: the night shift, dimmed lights, hushed sounds. Throbbing brain. There’s at least one other person inside the curtain, standing over Sylvain, brushing a greasy lock of hair off his forehead.

“—confirms that Cornelia is back on Fhirdiad,” Felix says. “She’s withdrawing ground troops from Fraldarius.”

The second person must be Dimitri, near Sylvain’s feet. “She’s baiting your father.”

If Cornelia can lure Rodrigue into an engagement with her Titanus ships, she may be able to exhaust and whittle down the Fraldarius fleet before Leicester finishes organizing for action. This puts Rodrigue in a bind: he recognizes the feint for what it is, but can’t leave Cornelia to dominate airspace. Then there’s the problem of those Faerghus planets who’ve pledged themselves to a usurper. Cornelia will make Leicester out to be the invader and rally a force against the foreign incursion. Felix scoffs. Rowe and Kleiman would rally around a burning house to keep themselves warm. 

Sylvain follows along partially. The withdrawal makes him feel sick and insane and lonely in the moments he has the capacity to name what he’s feeling at all. He’ll take any shred of humanity he can get. The lullaby of interstellar warfare. Felix’s hand, scratching at Sylvain’s scalp like he’s a dog. As if Sylvain doesn’t smell rank and probably look like shit. 

It feels—Goddess, it feels nice. A vine of trance-like warmth curls through Sylvain’s body. It twines through the fatigue; grows over the ache.

He gets the impression that Felix wouldn’t be this tactile if he knew Sylvain was awake. It’s difficult not to push back into Felix’s touch and give up the whole game. 

He misses whatever Felix says next to make a new silence fall. Saturated in old tension. 

“If you’d like an apology,” says Dimitri, “I’m afraid I have to disappoint you again.” 

Felix speaks with a hard serrated edge. “I’m not after your apology. You think I enjoyed watching Solon go free any more than you did? I know who he was to you, and now to Sylvain. If I see him again, I’ll kill him myself.”

So then Felix understands.

That’s not the point, Felix argues. Dimitri should’ve called for backup. His bloodlust makes him shortsighted and unpredictable out in the field.

“My bloodlust,” Dimitri repeats slowly. He does not deny it. There are many actions for which he deserves to be held to account. 

How does Dimitri expect to be held accountable if he’s dead. How many times are they going to have this conversation. A king has no place being a groundskeeper, and Felix refuses to take on that role either. He’s tired of having to—

Felix doesn’t finish saying what he’s tired of always having to do. 

The way Felix sounds, Sylvain’s heard it before. That fiery crackle. He can set the scene in his head; pluck Felix’s unseen expression ripe out of his memory. It’s Felix’s face from when they were both pissed off and afraid to lose what small amount they each had, and Sylvain spat out: that ice box is the last remaining person in your life. 

It’s not like Sylvain asked to be awake to hear the testimony of Felix’s devotion to another man. Would you like some more torture to go with your torture? 

Yet here he is, the dog, divining its person’s mood. He turns until his nose bumps against Felix’s knuckles. He nuzzles drowsily at Felix’s hand. Resurrecting ancient forms of communication. A universal language across planets and species. _You good?_

Felix freezes, suspicious. Sylvain goes on playing dead.

For one heart-stopping second, Felix pulls his hand away entirely—only to stroke it back through Sylvain’s hair. 

“Give me your position next time,” Felix says eventually. “Don’t go in by yourself.”

“You’ve carried me this far already.”

“So what. If you’ve convinced yourself I’ve ever been motivated by obligation, then we really don’t know each other anymore.”

Another lull. Then Dimitri says, “Of course. I won’t insult you by assuming otherwise again.”

There’s an unexpected dryness in Dimitri’s tone. Sylvain’s thoughts lose structure. The fever scoops him back into her arms. 

Felix keeps petting, mollified for now. Maybe he gets something out of this too. He lets Sylvain pretend he’s asleep until the cover becomes real.

Almost overnight, Sylvain’s symptoms plateau. In the morning he coerces a cute nurse into letting him walk around outside the medbay with supervision and stretch his legs. He gazes out through one of the viewing portholes at the oasis approaching through the pitch black desert. Derdriu’s jewel-blue surface, its multicolored outer ringlets growing brighter and brighter.

-

Eons ago, original exploration of Derdriu ran into a problem: how do you settle a water world?

Now civilization floats like lily pads across Derdriu’s vast oceans. Its cities are connected by bioluminescent bridges and sky railways, linking man-made islands back to shore. The planet’s capital is an architectural wonder. Fractal building structures, high-speed amphibious trains, hydroponic farming. An insane level of infrastructure technology coexisting with the sea. 

Most beautiful place in the galaxy, and Sylvain is stuck inside the medical center of a military starship base. Publish that in your travel guide. 

He sits through evaluations of his physical and mental condition. Medical imaging and more blood tests. Debriefs with Leicester intelligence officers to go over the play-by-play of how he was captured, how he was treated, how it’s affecting him. 

The information gets shared over transmission with the Faerghus rebel camp, who would additionally like to know how honorably Sylvain comported himself under extreme duress.

“I’d give myself a six out of ten,” Sylvain says. “Average to above average comportment.”

“Could you be more specific,” says the interviewer.

Not even a cracked smile. Admittedly this isn’t Sylvain’s best work. He’s hovering at a six out of ten on the coping scale too. Yeah, by the end of it I was begging her to hurt me—is that what you want to hear? 

The veil is gone. Sylvain is clear-headed again, looking straight into the face of the last six weeks. Shoveling dirt, trying to bury it. He sets a new record for how long he can turn away from his own thoughts. In the evenings Dedue sits with him and they talk shop until Sylvain exhausts himself enough to pass out.

Two days pass as the drugs finish working their way out of Sylvain’s system.

“And then I’m in the clear?” Sylvain asks Linhardt, the crest specialist who’s been poking and prodding at him every other hour. 

Linhardt is Adrestian, like many of the best crest specialists. Evidently being a crest specialist in Adrestia nowadays means being on an Agarthan recruitment list, which Linhardt found distasteful enough to make himself pick up the pace, pack his things and go.

“Well,” Linhardt says, “maybe.”

“What does that mean,” Sylvain says, with some irritation.

Linhardt ignores the attitude as he swabs Sylvain’s arm with disinfectant. “Do you know much about the Agarthans’ synthetic crest research?”

“Only that they sell it at a premium.” Highest bidder gets a sample of what it’s like to be one of the Goddess’s chosen.

For the first time in days, Linhardt appears interested in what Sylvain has to say. “You’re knee-deep in the black market yourself.”

“Knee-deep is overstating it,” Sylvain says, for the sake of plausible deniability. 

“Their product is defective, anyway,” Linhardt says. He enters the needle swiftly into Sylvain’s vein. Blood fills the collection tube. Linhardt seems to find the whole procedure as aversive as Sylvain does.

He goes on, “The intelligence reports indicate that transfusions with crestless hosts are uniformly disappointing. The process takes a toll. Most die of blood poisoning and infection. The second wave of trials on hosts who already bear crests has a less abysmal failure rate, but not by much.

“I suppose that makes you wave three. Instead of inserting something new inside of you, they harnessed control over what was already there.”

“Okay,” Sylvain says, barely processing the information. “How?”

Linhardt lists out: “Growth factors to signal blood cell production. Nanoparticles in your brain that activate and deactivate when triggered. A virus engineered to dial down your executive control, dial up your pain receptors, engage your fight-or-flight and then overstimulate your crest so that the needle always lands on ‘fight’. Think of it as an elegant form of rabies. The collar that Sergeant Fraldarius retrieved was the receiver.”

“Which Felix also destroyed,” Sylvain says. 

Linhardt shrugs. “The nanoparticles themselves may take up to months to dissolve.”

Sylvain’s head fills with a red light. A soft throat. He isn’t supposed to clench his fist with the needle in his arm. It takes effort not to. 

Linhardt looks at Sylvain’s face, and sighs like this next nugget of sympathy is some kind of extravagant allowance. “Regardless, you’re a defective trial too,” he says. “Sergeant Fraldarius reported that you’d already begun coming back into yourself before the collar was disabled.”

Is that real? Can Sylvain trust that too?

There’s a monster’s legacy inside Sylvain and if the Agarthans don’t control it, then who does. Goddess fucking help him if the responsibility is his. You come back one time and then you have to keep coming back. Keep finding footpaths through the exhilaration and terror and guilt. Keep choosing to live. 

Linhardt finally finishes the blood draw. He turns away to store the tube. It looks so unremarkable outside of Sylvain’s body. A garden-variety shade of red.

Sylvain finds himself asking, “You said none of the crestless hosts survive the transfusion?”

“A few do,” Linhardt says. “For a certain definition of survival.”

“Right,” Sylvain says. 

Why is he asking? What does it matter? Like it changes anything. It doesn’t make what happened fair or right. It doesn’t mean Sylvain isn’t the reason that Miklan’s dead. 

It forms inside his chest anyway: a complicated crystal of admission and relief. He’d killed some part of his brother. But other people had gotten there first.

-

And then, after he’s gotten hostile with even the prettiest faces in uniform, after he’d rather chew his own tongue off than talk or think again about what happened: he hears her feet before the rest of her, weaving chaotically through the hallway, so fast he’d swear her boots are burning rubber.

Annette appears at the door, wide-eyed, tousled, panting for breath. She has the awareness to first glance at Dedue to confirm whether or not Sylvain is in a physical state to be hug-bombed.

Dedue must give the affirmative, because the next moment she’s throwing herself at Sylvain and tucking her face against his shoulder. 

Sylvain wraps his left arm around her. It’s an awkward angle but neither of them relent. Her hair stinks eternally of engine oil. He buries his nose in it. The sense memory nearly blinds him.

He asks, “Should you really be running on that leg?”

“That’s the first thing you’re going to say to me?” Annette says crossly. The effect is ruined by her hiccupped crying. “I thought you were dead. Why couldn’t you have just gone with Ashe! Why do you always have to act like—” she squeezes harder and Sylvain groans, “—oh no, am I too heavy? Am I hurting you? Do you want me to let go?”

“No,” Sylvain says.

“Okay. I’m so glad to have you back, I’m so—I could _slap_ you.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve heard that from a beautiful woman.” 

“Ugh.” Annette sniffles. “You’re awful. I missed you.”

Sylvain’s entire face burns abruptly. 

He can feel it coming. There’s nothing he can do to stop it. The cork bobs back up to the surface of water each time he tries to push it down. 

From the doorway Ashe says, “Is he—?” and Dedue says, “Yes,” and Annette wipes her nose on Sylvain’s shirt and says, “C’mere, I’ll scoot over.”

Ashe climbs onto the bed too and hugs Sylvain with a different kind of fierceness. He doesn’t say anything yet. Sylvain should take responsibility and go first anyway. Sorry for how shit went down on Gloucester and how close you came to losing your third family in a row.

“Hey,” he says. That’s as far as he manages.

“Let’s talk about it later,” Ashe says into Sylvain’s chest, sharing the real estate with Annette.

Sylvain nods, throat constricting, and holds on. Something approaching from outside his field of vision makes him twitch. 

“It’s just me,” Mercedes says. She touches Sylvain’s shoulder. “You’re safe.”

Sylvain fucking loses it. 

He hides his face against the crown of Annette’s head, horrified with himself and his behavior. He’s making Annette’s hair disgusting, what the hell is wrong with him. Is this what people mean by homesickness? He’s reaching the stage where his shoulders heave with wet, battered breaths. His lungs are about to pop from how snugly each of them is cocooning him. The colossal feeling grows inside his ribs, momentarily forcing out anything else that could possibly exist. 

-

There’s a minor dispute over who exactly Sylvain gets released to. Typical procedure is tangled up by Sylvain’s status as a non-combatant, a deserter, a prodigal son with a warrant out for his arrest, an extralegal cargo-runner operating across sector borders, and an overall low-grade intergalactic pain in the ass. 

The dispute is put to rest by Felix’s arrival, who Sylvain glimpses through the glass door panel, demanding and fearless in the face of Leicester brass, saying what sounds like, “He’s one of mine.”

“Ours,” Dimitri cuts in firmly, by Felix’s side. “He’s of Faerghus, and subject to our laws and protection. We’ll oversee the repatriation of one of our own.”

Mercedes shakes Dedue, who’s dozing in a chair, catching up on sleep after days of acting as Sylvain’s midnight crutch. Then she asks, “Ashe, Annie, could you go track down some coffee?”

Annette interrupts herself mid-sentence as she’s telling Sylvain all about how the crew’s been able to fund itself the past few weeks (planetside courier jobs, mostly). She looks outside, spots Felix, says “Oh!” and, “Yes, let’s go do that.”

“Dedue and I will find someone to ask about the discharge process,” Mercedes says. 

“Have some mercy, Mercie,” Sylvain says.

Dedue rises from his chair, bleary and mussed up. “We won’t be far, captain.”

“Cream and sugar in your coffee, right?” Ashe says angelically. 

Out in the hospital hallway there’s another mini-reunion. Dimitri receives a greeting from Dedue and a hug from Mercedes that catches him visibly off-guard. He returns it the way a bear might think to hold a bird. Huh. That’s—new.

Felix extricates himself from the center of an Annette and Ashe sandwich (less new). He walks purposefully closer, and closer, and then he’s inside Sylvain’s patient room.

They take each other in. Felix is as arresting as ever, hand cast and dark circles and all. Over the past couple days Sylvain has come up with some good options for the first non-medicated thing he says to Felix. He’s unable to remember any of them. 

He goes with: “So who gets custody of me?”

“Faerghus,” Felix says stiffly. “Most likely Gautier.”

“Home sweet home,” Sylvain says, bright and bitter. 

“You’ll be prosecuted for smuggling. Dimitri has the authority to grant you clemency once he retakes the throne.”

“My thanks to His Highness, then.”

“We haven’t secured you an escort yet,” Felix says. “Leicester’s mobilizing, and my father can’t spare the men. Prisoner transfer isn’t a priority. There’s a risk that you’ll fall through the cracks in the chaos of wartime.”

Sylvain stares at Felix, who looks back at him with an impassive expression. 

“Oh, Mr. Fraldarius,” Sylvain finally says. “You’re bad.”

“Never call me that again,” Felix says darkly. But he unfolds his arms, posture easing up. He glances at the wall as he tells Sylvain, “You look good.”

“Oh yeah?” Sylvain grins a little. He’s mortifyingly conscious of how swollen his eyes are.

“Better than you looked on the dropship.” That’s one way to compliment another person. Felix frowns and amends, “It’s good to see you on your feet again.”

Sylvain nods at the cast. “How much longer does that have to stay on?”

“Another week,” Felix says, and preempts Sylvain’s apology: “It’s fine. It’ll come off before the fleet deploys.”

Right there’s the reason why Sylvain would’ve preferred to avoid future moments alone with Felix. The job’s over. Delivery made and invoice paid. Howling at the moon was fun while it lasted. 

But after everything they’ve gone through, Sylvain can handle a friendly farewell. “Is the ink dry on the alliance with Leicester?”

“Not yet.” Felix takes the chair Annette was just occupying. “Negotiations had to be put on hold when Dimitri and I left with the special forces team.”

“I bet the roundtable loved that.”

Felix rolls his eyes. “What else does anyone expect when Faerghus’s statesmen are also her generals.” 

Based on the cadence, Felix is impersonating Senator Gloucester, but it’s not good. Sylvain laughs, his standards lowered by incurable fondness. 

“It’s kind of funny how, after all my talk about getting you to Derdriu, you were the one who had to drag my body across the finish line.”

“I don’t think it’s funny,” Felix says.

“You know what I mean,” Sylvain says. He’s grateful his voice is already rough and fucked up so it can’t get any worse when he says, “Thanks for coming for me.”

He says it thinking, after this, they can both be done. He goes back to the _Scylla_ and her crew; Felix to his king and their war. Balance is restored. In his mind he’s doing them both a favor. 

Felix is not supposed to respond, “Stay for a few days. Annette told me you’re waiting for a ship permit anyway.”

Sylvain laughs again, this time dumbfounded. “Really?”

Felix looks bruised by the reaction. “What.”

“We’ve both been shot at. You got knocked out by a teenage girl. Felix, I almost strangled you. I haven’t slept through a single night. If we spend any more time together I think one of us is going to lose a limb.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Felix says.

What does anyone say to that? Half of Sylvain wants to kiss Felix until oxygen deprivation knocks them both out of commission; the other half wants to yell _I don’t know what you want!_

He splits the difference, taking Felix’s unbandaged hand instead of grabbing his unnaturally beautiful face. He makes an honest attempt not to make this come out like an accusation. “You said it first, that you couldn’t stay.”

Felix drops his gaze to stare down at their linked hands. Doesn’t answer right away, as if he has to core it out from someplace inside himself first.

“That was six weeks ago,” Felix says grimly.

He adds, sounding a little lost now, “I haven’t been sleeping either.”

It clicks into place for Sylvain. How much Felix looks like he did on the day they met. Seeking passage. Lugging around the weight of an entire other person, refusing to let go. 

There’s a lot of shit that doesn’t seem to shake Felix: a gun in his face, a guy twice his size, heights, law-breaking, casual sex. His actual weaknesses all have faces, a heartbeat. How did it feel when he discovered there was a brand new one walking around, straying in and out of his line of sight?

He grips Sylvain painfully hard. Felix’s protection is a ferocious thing to receive. Worth more than anything’s market value, including Sylvain’s. But Felix is offering nonetheless. Sylvain draws a slow breath. He raises their hands so he can kiss the ridge of Felix’s knuckles. 

“Sure,” Sylvain says, “I’ll stick around for a while.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter left (claude incoming!) and then the epilogue, thanks for reading, you're the best


	14. itinerary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What’s next?

A perk of being Dimitri’s ward and Felix’s arguable main squeeze: Sylvain gets to crash with them at the foreign state guesthouse. 

The trade-off: he’s confined to the premises. He pores through a backlog of airwaves. He does the recommended physical therapy, though the doctors already said they aren’t optimistic about him getting full range of motion back in his right arm, after the accumulated trauma and strain. The bruising on his balls has faded. He tries to jack off a few times, but his heart isn’t in it. 

At least the library’s decent. Over a thousand books on intergalactic history and culture, with a modestly-sized literature donated by visiting delegations. Most evenings Sylvain sits in a rigid ornate chair, reading up on Sreng. 

Across the room, Dimitri and Felix are nailing down the terms of the alliance. Felix gestures at the draft with a paring knife, his half-eaten apple in the other hand. 

“It is expedient that the relationship between the Church of Seiros and the Holy Sector of Faerghus not be vertical or indeed subservient; rather, satisfaction of the duties and responsibilities of each body requires a horizontal arrangement,” he reads aloud. “It sounds like you’re inviting the Archbishop to dance.”

“Our sovereignty is owed in part to the Church’s mediation,” Dimitri says. “Most Faerghans are believers in the Goddess. The issue of separation has to be approached tactfully.”

“Tact is useless without strength. If Rhea senses that you’ve left her any room to fight back on this, she will.”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Dimitri spars back.

“You’ve shot down my last four suggestions,” Felix says.

“I’m open to suggestions that aren’t just dissertations on your antipathy towards authority figures.”

It’s like listening to a cat yowl its complaints at a big shaggy dog yowling back at a deeper register. 

The conversation grinds to a halt. Sylvain looks up to see Dimitri pinching the bridge of his nose. The man gets hit by some nasty headaches. Still adjusting to monocular vision. Nobody has mentioned where he got the eye patch from, but Sylvain recognizes the little flowers stitched on the band. 

“Excuse me,” Dimitri says gruffly.

“It’s fine,” Felix says. “I’ll read it to you.”

Dimitri calls out without lifting his head, “Sylvain, would you lend us your opinion?”

Felix’s gaze is searching him out before he can go back to pretending to read his book. 

“Is that appropriate?” Sylvain asks, wholly caught off-guard.

“Get over here,” Felix says, deftly carving off another apple slice and eating it straight off the knife. Is that actually hot, or is Sylvain too far gone? Either way.

Sylvain joins them at the antique writing table. He’d never say he dislikes attention, but this particular attention is particularly stressful. Like he’s about to set off ten different tripwires, political and relational. 

Felix passes over the pages from his perch on top of the desk surface. He scoots closer so he can keep reading over Sylvain’s shoulder.

Faerghus’s most immediate interests are well-represented: military aid and defense. So are Leicester’s: free trade and market access. The old Senator Gloucester probably creamed his pants at provision five. Then there are the provisions with their arrow fixed on the future: an inevitable throwdown against Thales, a world where Rhea might allow herself to be declawed and defanged. 

“I’m with His Highness on this one,” Sylvain says, careful as he skims the draft. “I’m all in favor of disestablishment, but pushing it through a war treaty sends kind of an aggressive message.”

“What’s wrong with aggression,” Felix says.

Dimitri sounds equally stubborn but also like he has a migraine. “The Archbishop is not an unreasonable woman, but she won’t respond well to attempts to intimidate her.”

“She’d probably be easier to persuade if you took her biggest existential threat off the board for her first,” Sylvain says. 

When he glances up, Dimitri is frowning in consideration. “Defeating Thales relies on a successful coalition with Edelgard, which itself is conditional on our separation from the Church.”

“The Church was never going to be disestablished in a day.” This is starting to remind Sylvain of doing business with Leonie. Kind of enjoyable. “Holy Sector of Faerghus—it’s in her name.” 

“Whatever the timeline, there’s nothing to be gained by being coy about our intentions,” Felix says. “This ends with the Church of Seiros getting stripped of its military arm.”

Felix uses his foot to nudge out a second chair as he’s talking. Sylvain takes a seat. 

-

The final version of the Preliminary Treaty of Derdriu outlines seven provisions:

  1. The two contracting parties, the Leicester Republic and the loyal territories of the Holy Sector of Faerghus, hereby unite for the purposes of bringing action against the common enemy Cornelia and her illegitimate Faerghus Dukedom, ending the subjugation of the citizens of Faerghus and broader Fódlan from Agarthan predatory rule, and safely restoring Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, son of the late King Lambert and rightful heir to the Faerghus throne.
  2. In the event that the common enemy refuses to accede to conditions of surrender, the contracting parties engage to apply all the means of their respective sectors to her prosecution, until the liberty of the Holy Sector of Faerghus may be secured.
  3. The contracting parties engage not to treat separately with the common enemy. Both parties moreover promise not to lay down arms nor sign peace, truce, or convention until the conflict’s mutually agreed objectives have been achieved. 
  4. To contribute to the prompt and decisive fulfillment of this goal, the Leicester Republic engages to provide funds, arms, and troops to be divided in equal proportion amongst parties. The Leicester Republic will arrange, before the 1st of the Guardian Moon, further succours during each subsequent year, if the war should so long continue.
  5. Upon the restoration of her legitimate king, the Holy Sector of Faerghus consents to future trade agreements regarding the elimination of customs duties on goods either originating from or destined for territories within the Leicester Republic. The Holy Sector of Faerghus also consents to annual financial contributions towards maintenance of the Locket. 
  6. Galactic equilibrium being the aims of the prevailing conflict, the contracting parties engage to revise relations between Church and Sector. The Holy Sector of Faerghus commits to the formation of an investigative committee in pursuit of the timely disestablishment of the Church of Seiros, following the defeat of the common enemy. If so needed, the Leicester Republic will intervene to monitor such an agreement.
  7. The contracting parties will enter, without delay, into engagements against future efforts made by the common enemy to infringe on the peace. To this effect, both parties agree that in the event that one party is threatened with attack, the other shall employ their most resolute efforts to come to their assistance. 



Three secret provisions are included:

  1. The contracting parties direct their efforts toward the advancement of the following system:  
_a._ The sector Leicester composed of sovereign planets united by a federative roundtable under the guarantee of independence from monarchy;  
_b._ The sector Faerghus governed by the heir apparent, Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, and her union with the Church of Seiros dissolved;  
_c._ The sector Adrestia returned to her former limits and territories, governed by the heir apparent, Princess Edelgard von Hresvelg.
  2. For the Church of Seiros to perform its duties, which derive from religion, its principal mode of operation must be religious, not political nor militaristic. The contracting parties thereby engage to apply pressure on the Church to cede authority in these domains to the jurisdiction of individual sectors. The contracting parties seek the full rights of all citizens regardless of religion; the disarmament of the Knights of Seiros excluding matters of Church security; the disengagement of the Church from spheres of education, economics, and foreign policy; and the independence of the Church to approve its own doctrine, appoint its own bishops, and regulate its own affairs without interference as a religious association, rather than a quasi-state and military institution.
  3. In execution of the open treaty, the contracting parties agree to invite the participation of Princess Edelgard von Hresvelg, and other sovereigns according to the exigency of the case.



-

Sylvain wakes up with a hard, silent flinch.

His hands are free this time. He claws at the impenetrable thing smothering his face. 

The bedsheet. He rips it off and sits up, gasping. There’s not enough—he can’t get enough air. 

There’s somebody next to him. His hand shoots blindly over to the nightstand—

It’s Felix. He knows that it’s Felix. 

A low murmur of sympathy: “Sylvain.”

Felix’s silhouette moves, sitting up too. Sylvain deliberately relaxes his arm and lets go of his pistol. Having to catch his breath puts him back on that bench. In the ground, left for dead. The only reason he didn’t drown either time was cosmic timing and dumb fucking luck.

“I’m fine,” he says after an eternity, when his pulse has notched back down into a moderately quick thud. “I’m good.”

Felix’s hand is on the center of Sylvain’s back, rubbing there. The up-and-down motion that Sylvain’s breathing has tuned itself to. Felix sleeps in his underwear like Sylvain. His skin is warm and his face, hovering close enough to see through the darkness, is alert.

Sylvain leans in automatically to kiss him.

Felix makes a surprised noise, but kisses back. Sylvain’s body temperature is boiling hot enough that Felix feels cool against him. 

They haven’t actually done it this way before: nice, well-mannered kissing. Sounds are hollow and distorted. The soft smacking of their mouths. Felix runs his thumb over Sylvain’s clammy cheek. 

Sylvain can’t take the kindness right now. This is playground shit. 

He pulls back and moves Felix’s hair out of the way to kiss Felix’s jawline. Felix reacts with a nice little shiver. 

See? He’s capable of touching Felix without hurting him. His body has more to offer than dealing and receiving pain. 

“Do you want to mess around a little?” Sylvain’s mouth brushes Felix’s ear. “Pick up where we left off?”

He was waiting for the right time to ask. Maybe it’s now. When he slides a hand up Felix’s muscled thigh to squeeze Felix through his underwear, Felix is soft, but Sylvain can fix that. 

He straddles Felix’s lap and kisses him again, hotter, deeper. Felix’s hand—the unbandaged one that Sylvain didn’t crush—grips his waist, holding him steady.

It’s still fairly tame but Sylvain’s heart keeps going irregularly fast. Felix is growing tense; his participation comes and goes. As if any minute he expects Sylvain to—nope, nah, Sylvain isn’t going to think about that. The memory slithering through the tall grass. He shuts his brain off and grinds down against Felix instead, slow and dirty. Felix finally runs that hand down Sylvain’s back, kneading his ass, and Sylvain lets out an encouraging moan. 

This only sets Felix further on edge. Sylvain can feel Felix thinking, the gears in his head grinding faster.

Felix mutters, “This is a bad idea.”

“Why?” Sylvain sucks a path down Felix’s neck, which is soft and unbroken and not being wrung to death in Sylvain’s hands. “I’ve been dying for you to fuck me.”

Felix tugs Sylvain off by the hair. His face is unreadable. “It’s too fast.”

“And shower sex was slow?” The back of Sylvain’s skull twinges. “I want to make you feel good. At least let me suck you off.”

“What’s going on with you?” Felix says, with a push that doesn’t hurt but isn’t totally gentle. 

Sylvain doesn’t resist, rolling off of Felix with a flash of irritation to sprawl onto his back. “It’s a blowjob, Fraldarius, not a ring.”

In two abrupt movements, Felix climbs all the way out of bed.

Sylvain goes silent. Not that he’d ruled out the possibility of ever being kicked out, but right now he’d rather get waterboarded again than spend the rest of tonight alone. 

Felix’s expression is shrouded in the dark. Sylvain can only make out the way Felix is standing, one tightly corded and unhappy line. The bulge of Felix’s partial erection in his underwear, which would be sexy in any other situation but now just makes Sylvain feel like complete shit. What is he doing. Where the fuck is his head at. 

Finally Felix says, “Get up.” 

Sylvain gets up on autopilot. “Felix, I…”

Felix shoves a hand through his own hair. Then, harshly: “Follow me.”

Felix takes him through the entire guesthouse. They scope out every accessible room: the library, the drawing and conference rooms, the study, the dining space. They do a lap outside around the gardens. It’s exactly the sort of activity somebody like Felix would take solace in. This is the layout. These are the windows that open and lock, and these are the ones that don’t. Here are the two exit routes. Three potential alternatives if those first two are somehow disabled.

Mapping access points doesn’t typically provide Sylvain any comfort. But the experience of walking around on his feet scrapes the vestigial nightmare off his body. This is the stone path. Here’s some fresh air. That’s the sea you smell and hear in the far distance, salty and full of life.

They circle back around to Felix’s room. With permission, Sylvain gets back into bed behind Felix. He didn’t think it was possible, but now that they’re lying down he’s suddenly tired again. 

“Do you do that a lot?” he asks the planes of Felix’s back.

“Sometimes,” Felix says without turning around. There’s a brief stretch of silence. “I gave my old man a black eye once. He heard me having a dream and tried to wake me. I thought I was still in the middle of it.”

“Was he angry?”

“I don’t think so,” Felix says. “I never understood why he didn’t get more angry about things.”

Sylvain can’t relate, whole different class of dad, but he can at least think of what he would’ve liked to hear. “Maybe he was just glad that at least you weren’t hurt.”

Felix makes a muted sound, neither agreeing or disagreeing. “I may punch you too at some point.”

“Sure,” Sylvain says. “Fair trade-off.”

“What the hell was that earlier?” 

Sylvain closes his eyes. “I don’t know. Probably a psychosexual version of me also accidentally socking my dad in the face.”

He pictures what expression Felix is making. Felix’s body feels taut like he’s making some kind of an expression. Disgust? Impatience? 

“I’m in this with you,” Felix says instead. Low and serious, so startlingly intimate that it makes Sylvain wish for a spot of moonlight so they could properly see each other. “I’m here. Alright? I won’t let anything else happen.”

Sylvain curls in closer and pushes his face into the crook of Felix’s neck and shoulder. He smells catastrophically good. A scent that’s on the cusp of becoming familiar.

“That’s pretty romantic,” Sylvain says against Felix’s nape. “Did you want a ring after all? ‘Cause I know a great fence.”

Felix ignores him. “Wake me if you have another dream. Don’t try that other bullshit with me again.”

“Got it,” Sylvain says. “We’re saving ourselves for marriage.”

“Be serious.”

“You think I’m not serious?”

Sylvain settles in. The shitty, sinister feeling of foreboding that attached itself to his soul is slumbering too, enough for them both to get some real sleep. 

-

The next time it gets bad, they walk the perimeter again. The time after that, same deal. Sex, it turns out, works well too when Sylvain isn’t just going through the motions. Felix puts Sylvain on his back, pushes his knees up high and wide, and finally fucks him face-to-face with long deep strokes that wipe every thought clean from Sylvain’s head. Felix fucks him so thoroughly that Sylvain comes twice, all over his chest and up to his own chin, passes out immediately, and doesn’t wake up until noon. 

Then one time, nothing’s enough, so Sylvain waits for Felix to fall back asleep first, then kisses his cheek and leaves bed by himself. Heads to the sitting room to drink and wait for morning.

Apparently this is a popular idea.

The image Dimitri strikes is that of a caught-out insomniac. The light of the sitting room fireplace makes his bone structure skeletal. He stops when he notices Sylvain already inside. Sylvain waves lazily with his whisky glass from his spot in front of the fire. 

“It’s a big fireplace,” Sylvain says. “We can share, if you don’t mind the company.” 

Dimitri is reluctant. Sylvain gets that. It feels more luxuriously self-hating to wallow alone. But if the two of them are in the same boat tonight, they may as well paddle together.

In the end Dimitri seats himself in an actual chair instead of on the floor. He’s heavy on his feet, his face shadowed. He rejects Sylvain’s offer to grab him a second glass. 

Sylvain asks, “Bad dreams?”

Dimitri gives a single dip of his head. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sylvain says. It’s easier being on this side of the equation. 

“They’re unpleasant to discuss,” Dimitri rumbles. 

Sylvain smiles vaguely up at Dimitri before turning back around towards the fireplace. They’re both quiet for some time. 

“When I was a kid,” Sylvain says, “I used to have this nightmare where I had to piss really badly.”

No reaction from Dimitri. 

“I was honestly five seconds from wetting myself. I was running around this giant building and every bathroom I found had some awful grotesque shit inside. There’d be some crying lady pulling her own intestines out, or a man with a broken neck hanging from the ceiling. And I just wanted to take a leak in peace. And then eventually one of the bathrooms ended up being a stage, with a hundred guys up in the audience all sitting there wearing bird beaks.

“They didn’t do or say anything. They just stared at me. And I thought, this is as good as it’s gonna get, so I whipped my dick out.”

Sylvain glances back over his shoulder. “It messed me up back then, but now it’s kind of funny. So I figure maybe in a few years I’ll laugh at the shit I dream about now.”

“What do you dream of now?” Dimitri asks finally. 

“Lately it’s this one where I’m buried alive. But it’s weird because there’s blood soaking into the dirt and the coffin, so instead of suffocating I drown.”

“I haven’t drowned before,” Dimitri says. “I’ve burned many times.”

Duscur, Sylvain assumes, but knows better than to probe directly. 

Dimitri, unsurprisingly, dreams often of his family and friends. They appear to him differently from how he remembers them in life, crueler and more wrathful. Or perhaps it’s Dimitri himself who has changed. His memory and senses are not always to be trusted. Sometimes his stepmother is the one bleeding him instead of Cornelia. Sometimes he’s fighting on the battlefield and he glimpses his father in the corner of his eye but by the time he’s done slaughtering everyone else, his father is gone. 

Sometimes Dimitri buries Felix’s dead brother under the floorboards, and as he lies there he hears something scratching at the wood.

“Fuck,” Sylvain says, “that’s terrifying.”

Dimitri makes a deep noise of acknowledgement. 

“There’s another,” he recalls haltingly. “My father and I are sitting by his gravestone. He’s healthy. I can smell the grass.” 

He goes slowly. He doesn’t look at Sylvain, only stares fixedly into the fire. “I’ve brought him some sweet bread and fruit. We eat together and he asks after how I’ve been in his absence. He asks me to be truthful, so I am. I tell him how it’s… difficult. Then he touches my face, and his hand on my cheek is—familiar. This time his presence is… it feels like my father.”

Dimitri stops there for a while. “I only ever dreamt of it one time,” he says. “I nearly forgot until now.”

Sylvain rubs his forehead, unable to speak. He imagines having to wake up from that. With a giant hole in his chest. 

He finishes his drink and doesn’t refill it. There remain at least three more hours until sunrise. The fire crackles softly. The ambient heat pricks his eyes. “This shit goes on forever,” he says. 

“It seems that way,” Dimitri says.

Walking the perimeter still mostly works. The next time it doesn’t, Dimitri has already beaten him to the sitting room, and gestures for Sylvain to come inside. 

-

Sylvain gets a visitor the next day. He was beginning to wonder if he’d show up. 

“Senator Riegan,” he greets.

“Claude is fine,” says Claude von Riegan. He’s dressed in formal tan for the roundtable meeting, but his cravat is loose and his hair is messy. Charming and approachable as if his fingerprints weren’t all over those treaty terms. 

Felix and Dimitri have both already left. Claude’s on his way over to the capitol too, but he was thinking about grabbing a bite to eat first. “You hungry?” Claude asks. 

“I’m an indoor pet nowadays,” Sylvain says. 

Claude taps the golden Leicester lapel pin on his chest. “They’ll let you out with me.”

He has a friendly smile and a gaze uncomfortably similar to a magnifying glass, but Sylvain has been cooped up long enough that he’d follow Claude off a cliff as long as the cliff was outdoors and at least ten blocks away. 

Derdriu is a major galactic port and center of commerce. The _Scylla_ has docked here for her fair share of both clean and dirty jobs. Still, it’s always fun to be shown around by a local. The outdoor market is full of colorful fruit and vegetable stalls; early morning catches being unloaded from the boats in the market docks. The quality of fish on Derdriu is well-known, but the artichokes are a more hidden gem. Apparently they flourish in mild climates with plenty of moisture. Claude knows how to hold a conversation, to the point where Sylvain can almost ignore the fact that he’s definitely here on business.

The business: halfway through breakfast at Claude’s favorite hole-in-the-wall, he tells Sylvain, “This is for you.”

It’s the ship regulation documents, stamped by Leicester spacetime authority, all neatly tucked inside a plain envelope. 

A layer of smog clears from Sylvain’s heart.

It means more than Claude knows, or maybe Claude knows exactly: it’s the ability to fly again. Thirty percent less of the trouble that comes from law enforcement sniffing around too closely. And if Claude’s kind-of, sort-of the catalyst for why all that trouble stowed away aboard the _Scylla_ in the first place—hey, who’s counting. 

“You still have sector-wide alerts out on you,” Claude says, “so keep your distance from the patrols. Merchant papers aren’t going to do you any good if your ship’s codex gets scanned.”

Sylvain slips the envelope into his jacket. “No problem. We’re pros at running away.”

“Yeah, I met your crew,” Claude says, mischievous. “They’re a lively bunch.” 

The envelope is what Sylvain understands to be the hook. What comes next is the line: “I also got a look at your ship’s official employment history.”

“Is this a job interview?” Sylvain asks lightly.

Claude rolls with it. “More like a recruitment pitch.”

The open admission makes Sylvain laugh, startled. “I thought you already hit the jackpot with both Felix and His Highness in your corner.”

“You can never have too many friends.”

“I appreciate the papers, Senator, but the _Scylla_ isn’t a warship. Getting drafted is what landed her in the shipyard in the first place.”

She was never built to meet military combatant standards. Her artillery remains the saddest shit. She couldn’t shoot a sick pigeon out of the sky. Running around during the Almyran invasion, refueling and rearming Goneril’s star destroyers nearly killed her. 

“Holst is already up to his ears in warships,” Claude says casually. “We could use an extra transport for war relief, though, or else the galaxy border is going to heal a lot slower than the central planets and moons. I read that your ship was originally commissioned to move breakbulk cargo.”

“I don’t know if I’m the best guy for that job either,” Sylvain says. “I’m assuming somebody told you my family name by now.”

Everyone knows that crossing paths with a black cat means bad luck. A Gautier at the galaxy border is an omen of bombs and ammunition, not flour and medicine. But there’s an edge to Claude’s smile as he says, “Folks change their name all the time.”

It takes under ten words to strip Sylvain straight to the bone. 

Claude seems to consider, for a moment, his next move. “How many deaths does Gautier report each year at the border with Sreng?”

Sylvain works his tongue loose again. “Around five hundred, last I was there.” 

“Fódlan’s had a wall around her since I was in diapers. The last person to try normalizing relations with any of her neighbors was your old king, and we know what happened afterwards. If we keep treating everything outside that wall like a threat instead of a frontier, we’re going to keep choking off trade and scientific discovery and exchange. With or without the Agarthans, we’ll keep getting people killed.”

How many times has Claude given this speech? Enough that it’s fine-tuned; not so many times that rehearsal has made Claude any less intent. “When Thales is gone, there’ll be a window to redraw the status quo.”

“And you’re trying to get a headstart,” Sylvain says.

“Resource scarcity and border skirmishes go hand and hand. We’re not resolving one with the other.”

“Which neighbors are we talking about? Sreng?”

“Sreng,” Claude answers. “Almyra. What can be restored of Duscur.”

“You’ll have to pry the militarized borders from Faerghus’s cold dead hands.”

“From what I can tell, His Princeliness would prefer a gentler grip himself. Besides,” Claude adds, “Faerghus isn’t the only one with a history. We fight and mistrust each other and eat our young in every sector. Change is due all over.” 

It’s a hell of a recruitment pitch. 

Is Sylvain getting played here? He can’t entirely tell. Pool hustlers are the ones who tell you a false story about themselves. Card sharps just tell you where to look. This hand and not the dirty one. What they’re saying, not how they’re moving. Claude clearly has a destination in mind, and to get there he’s shown he’s willing to cheat, make deals, call in favors for outlaws, and raise the sleeping dead. 

Sylvain and his crew humped His (soon to be) Royal Majesty Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd across the galaxy in a refrigerator. A sack of seed grain is nothing. 

“We have a delivery to make on Sauin first,” Sylvain says later when Claude returns him to his glorified house arrest. “And that’s after I’m done answering for my smuggling crimes, obviously.”

“Don’t let me get in the way of you repaying your debt to society.” Claude throws a two-finger salute, his green eyes alight. “But keep in touch.”

-

When it looks like the transmission possibly won’t go through, Sylvain feels both disappointed and shamefully relieved. Then her face appears, hazy and serious on the tablet. She says, “Yes?” first, before she registers who it is she’s talking to. “ _Sylvain_?”

“Hi Ingrid,” Sylvain says. 

She gapes at him for one centuries-long second.

“Goddess’s—immaculate tits,” and on _tits_ , Ingrid’s voice drops into a whispered shout, “I couldn’t get through to you for weeks! Where are you right now?”

“Derdriu,” Sylvain manages to get in while Ingrid is between breaths. 

“You ask me to reach out to you more often, and then you immediately vanish off the face of the universe. You always do this. You disappear without warning, you take off, you never honor the fact that other people—Goddess forbid—would be interested to know whether you’re dead or alive! It’s _insulting_ to anyone who cares about you. For once in our lives will you tell me what’s going on?”

Her enraged, concerned, total love for him traverses billions of miles to hit him with the same force as if she was sitting here right next to him. “You’re going to be mad,” is all Sylvain can say.

“You saying that doesn’t make me less mad,” Ingrid says. “I’ve been hearing rumors, you know. Your ship’s name is in almost all of them.”

“Which rumors are those?” 

Ingrid’s tone gets somehow even more accusatory. “General Fraldarius won’t confirm whether his son was sent to Derdriu as a military attaché or if he acted outside the chain of command. He’s also been less than forthright about how exactly His Highness crawled out of his grave to sign a defense pact with Leicester, and what rogue unauthorized vessel got him there.”

“Wow,” Sylvain says. “Whoever pulled that off must’ve been incredibly handsome and brave.”

“You look like you were chewed up by a black hole,” Ingrid says, unimpressed. 

“That’s hurtful, Ingrid. You know my looks are all I have left.”

Ingrid snorts (amused—he’s still got it), then schools her expression back into propriety. “I do want you to know that I regret how I behaved the last time we saw each other.”

Sylvain brushes it off. “You meant what you said.”

“I could’ve said it more kindly. You at least deserved that, after how long we’ve known each other.” 

That’s as good an opening as any. Sylvain isn’t going to get a better one. 

“I’m sorry too,” Sylvain says. “I haven’t been upfront with you.”

“Yes,” Ingrid says. “We’ve just covered that.”

“I’d really like to start,” Sylvain says, with effort.

Whatever she hears in Sylvain’s tone makes her furrowed brow furrow more. “Alright,” she says.

“Is now a good time?” Sylvain asks. “I don’t want to, uh,” he laughs, “I know there’s a civil war going on. You have a lot on your plate.”

“I’m free now,” Ingrid says. “If you’re willing to tell me, then I’d like to listen.” When Sylvain gets visibly stuck on what to do next, she assures, “I won’t be that mad.”

It’s not her anger and scorn that he’s spent years trying to avoid. He’d broken every rule when they were at school together, he’d made a fool of himself and her by association, and what he’d learned by the end was that each level of disciplinary action was infinitely easier to accept than Ingrid’s grace. Her exhausting refusal to give up on him. He’d always thought that if he told her the details of what happened on Conand, if even after that she found a way to look at him with unsweetened knowledge and recognition and say, “I forgive you”—he’d crumble to dust. Who was he if not the worst thing he’d ever done?

Time to find out. She’s waiting for him. He tells her a creation story. 

-

Getting the ship regulation documents takes care of the first reason Sylvain hasn’t left Derdriu yet and continues to accrue debt to Leonie.

The second reason is getting deployed soon. The Faerghus stronghold Arianrhod needs to be retaken. While Senator Admiral Holst Goneril maneuvers his fleet directly through the Nebula of Torment to join up with Rodrigue, Dimitri will go after Rowe. He’ll lead the ground forces and take back the Silver Maiden, isolating Cornelia from her Dukedom and Adrestian allies. From there, straight to Fraldarius for a two-pronged assault on Fhirdiad. The savior king returned. 

Felix trades in the hand cast for a platoon assignment. He and Dimitri are up early, back late, making preparations. Sylvain, for his part, is in contact with Dedue everyday, discussing Claude’s proposition and getting grilled about his health. “You are well?” Dedue will ask.

He’s working on it. Good and bad days. Today gets tallied under the relatively good column. Sylvain pants at the ceiling, “Hey, do you, uh.”

Felix gives a monosyllabic reply. He’s made himself at home between Sylvain’s thighs and is unbuttoning Sylvain’s shirt so he can explore the open v of Sylvain’s chest with his teeth. 

Sylvain gets his train of thought back a minute later. “Would you want to go on a date?”

One second drags on into five. Sylvain stamps out a kindling of insecurity as Felix avoids eye contact. There’s Felix when he’s unwilling, and then Felix when he’s shy.

“Yeah,” Felix says, still into Sylvain’s throat. “Where?”

Sylvain is allowed to go to a PT appointment to check up on his arm, so Felix tags along in order to “monitor him” because Sylvain poses a “flight risk” blah blah blah. As if half the guesthouse’s staff and guards haven’t heard Felix “monitoring” Sylvain stupid in the evenings. 

On the way back they “get lost” wandering the historic city quarter. It’s not a total lie. Derdriu has too many bridges to tell apart, and the canals are a maze. One footbridge has a rounded arch high enough that it forms a perfect circle with its reflection in the water.

“Claude approached me with a job offer,” Sylvain says as they stand at the top, watching the boats pass along the waterway below.

Felix grimaces. “I told him to leave you alone. You’ve done enough.”

“I could do more.” A young girl in one of the boats waves enthusiastically up at them. Sylvain waves back. “Not that I’d ever play soldier again. I don’t have the stomach for it.”

“You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” Felix says. “Killing is ugly. Don’t be sorry for not wanting to do it.”

“You stomach it better.”

“Yes,” Felix says simply, and Sylvain knows it’s without pleasure or self-satisfaction. Felix’s position on the topic of death is cold and clear. 

Reality hangs wordlessly between them. Pre-deployment has a way of hooking its claws into you. It’s this funny mix of dread, knowing your date is approaching, and a restless desire for it to hurry up and arrive. 

Sylvain felt it all the time too. Eventually he’d rather just be out in the field already with the red sand and the foxholes instead of among the artifacts of a life he’d no longer be living in another week’s time. The trio of moles on Felix’s shoulder. The irritated face he makes when he’s actually just confused, and the soft glaze in his eyes when he’s turned on. He never puts shit back where it belongs unless it’s a weapon. He always stands on a person’s right side to fill their blindspot. He’s literally doing it right now.

Yet as the sky darkens, the bridge begins to look like a full moon. Two boats are caught in a traffic jam as they attempt to pass each other in opposite directions. The boatmen start shouting graphically at one another to move or get fucked. Sounds like there’s some historic bad blood there. 

Felix’s mouth twitches up into a faint, irresistible grin.

“My dates usually aren’t this shitty,” Sylvain comments. “Usually there’s some theater, dancing. At the very least some food. I’ll take you on a better one next time.”

Felix shakes his head. “I don’t dislike this one,” he says.

-

All this time the _Scylla_ has been docked at one of Derdriu’s minor spaceports where the security’s less discerning. The crew’s been meeting weekly rent payments with the money that Ashe makes on freelance courier gigs under the name Duran. 

“What do you think?” Ashe asks, both eager and nervous, as Sylvain surveys her new exterior paint job for the very first time. Yellow where there was once red, black where there was once blue. 

Sylvain slings an arm around Ashe’s shoulders. “You took great care of her.”

Sunset is under an hour away, so they have to get moving. Mercedes stands with Felix at the bottom of the entry ramp. She’s listing out the contents of the small care package in Felix’s hands, wrapped in paper, tied with twine.

“—willow bark tea for Dimitri,” she’s saying. “It should help with the migraines.”

“I’ll give it to him,” Felix says. 

“There’s some reading material from Ashe,” Sylvain joins in. “Annie made you a mixtape. It’s so cute. For one of the tracks she—”

“Shh,” Mercedes says. “She wouldn’t want you to spoil it.”

“Thanks,” Felix says, awkwardly overwhelmed.

Mercedes squeezes Felix’s arm, before leaving him and Sylvain to say their goodbyes. 

“Well,” Sylvain says. Terrific start. 

He doesn’t know how to do this. Felix definitely doesn’t either, glancing down at where he’s holding the care package like a beating organ. It’s agonizing. Nothing Sylvain says is going to be good enough. _Take care._ Or _I think I really was serious._

It’s Felix who speaks first. He looks beyond Sylvain’s left ear, squares his shoulders, then brings himself to look into Sylvain’s face. 

“Don’t die out there,” Felix says.

“There go my weekend plans,” Sylvain says, if only to watch the way Felix reacts, bristling with affection.

He hadn’t intended to make out with Felix right in front of his crew (give him some credit) but what else is he going to do when Felix is standing there armed to the teeth with that perfect glower on his face, like they’re back on Garreg Mach and he’s just begging for Sylvain to walk into his life. He’s practically praying to be found. 

Sylvain cups Felix’s face in both hands. Felix surges up into him. Felix kisses like there’s a time limit but Sylvain keeps a hold on the reins this time. He takes Felix’s mouth with slow hot surety. 

Felix relaxes. His hand slips under Sylvain’s jacket and rests against the dip of Sylvain’s back. Sylvain is given a few seconds to lead and he takes full advantage, sliding his tongue into Felix’s mouth, opening Felix up good and soft and deep. Far from a first or last kiss. 

Then Felix bites, hard.

A laugh bursts out of Sylvain’s chest. He breaks away and touches his hurt bottom lip, tracking Felix’s own shining satisfied expression. 

Dedue approaches them right afterwards. His timing is so precise that Sylvain has to believe that he was just waiting long-sufferingly by the sidelines for them to finish sucking face. 

“We should be on our way,” Dedue says, and nods at Felix in lieu of a farewell. 

From behind Sylvain, Annette’s voice drifts down the entry ramp: “Bye, Derdriu,” she calls. “Bye, Felix, be safe!”

“We’ll write to you!” That’s Ashe.

“Bye, Annette,” Felix says. “Bye, Ashe, everyone.”

“Bye, Felix,” Sylvain says too, stroking the ends of Felix’s hair, his mouth throbbing with warmth. 

“Until we meet again,” Felix says.

“Yeah,” Sylvain says, “until then.”

-

Five voices climb over each other, collectively headed down the _Scylla_ ’s bridge:

“I’ll send Leonie a message and tell her we’re coming,” Dedue says.

“Let’s get the regulation papers filed into our system,” Sylvain says. “How’s the new boost synchronizer working out, Annie?”

“She overheats a lot more quickly than the old one. It’s not a big deal as long as we’re not trying to push her too far past factor two—and by the face you’re making, we’re totally going to try to go over factor two.”

“You and I should have a chat about restocking the infirmary,” Mercedes says. “I’ll make a shopping list. We’re low on nearly everything.”

“Throw a landspeeder on there too,” Sylvain says.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Ashe says. 

“What? C’mon, it’s fine. It’ll be an early birthday present.”

“What I mean is that we’re completely broke, captain.”

They filter down—disappearing off to the galley, the engine room—until it’s just Sylvain and Ashe together in the cockpit. Sylvain drops into the co-pilot seat, and stops.

“What’s wrong?” Ashe asks.

“Nothing,” Sylvain says distractedly. He pats around his jacket, searching for what he’d just felt, and discovers it hidden inside one of the interior pockets. 

Roughly worn steel on a short chain. Part of a set. The lettering is embossed. _F. H. Fraldarius._

“That asshole,” Sylvain chokes out.

Ashe identifies its meaning too. “Didn’t you also…” 

“Uh huh,” Sylvain says, breathless. 

It’d been instinct, when Mercedes first asked if he’d like to get in on Felix’s care package. He’d revealed to her where the wooden box was, stashed under his bunk aboard the ship. There were two sets of dog tags inside. He’d told her which pair to toss, lose, burn, just get rid of it by whatever method will keep. The other pair—he’d asked her to gift half to Felix. 

Sylvain squeezes Felix’s tag in his fist, then puts it on and tucks it under his t-shirt collar. It hangs against his neck heavier than a port anchor, more connective than blood. 

“How are we looking?” he asks Ashe, who turns back to the ship controls to give Sylvain some privacy. 

Annette signals an “ok” over the intercom, so Ashe punches in the _Scylla_ ’s launch commands. Her output screens light up as she awakens with a gentle roar. The momentum pushes Sylvain back against the seat. Daylight crests ahead. His girl crouches low, thrusters hot, listening for the word go. 

Ashe enters in the throttle setpoint and grabs hold of the yoke. 

“Clear skies, captain,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> holy shit, THERE’S ART:  
> [✰](https://twitter.com/vwyn19/status/1298140042871730176) poster and ship design by vwyn19  
> [✰](https://twitter.com/corviiid/status/1312326205077561344) ship cross-stitch by corviiid  
> [✰](https://twitter.com/kairoskairo/status/1303507342927986689) sylvix being hot by kairoskairo  
> [✰](https://twitter.com/justonevice/status/1327452925464080384) miklan visits sylvain (chapter 12) by justonevice  
> [✰](https://twitter.com/redamantian/status/1333453186171080710) fan-music by redamantian
> 
> a mini-soundtrack:  
> [✰](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z2zKPW5BxI) gia margaret - body  
> [✰](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoXFmo50YBI) animal collective - what would I want? sky  
> [✰](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1bKePvt4CE) ratboys - elvis is in the freezer  
> [✰](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv4709zd4qc) modest mouse - space travel is boring  
> [✰](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b0EfO4-YIo) kevin morby & waxahatchee - the dark don’t hide it


End file.
